I bashed my bonce upon a shelf, dislodging from it a tiny elf. It toppled down on to the floor and scampered out through my front door. I followed it as best I could, all the way into a wood. The wood was mostly larch and lime, and the elf was bent on an awful crime. I watched as it picked a woodcutter’s pocket. As it ran away I tried to block it. Then I saw its face, the hideous elf. It looked uncannily like Will Self. I fainted away in shock and fright, and when I awoke it was deepest night. The woodcutter led me to a glade and gave me tea and marmalade. I spooned it straight out from the jar, then we got into the woodcutter’s car and drove around in the pitch dark, thinking it would be a lark. But it was not – for we came a-cropper, and were arrested by a copper. He took us to the local nick, where I began to feel quite sick. Locked in a cell, I bewailed my fate. Then the elf came in, fair oozing hate. He bashed me on my bonce again, and then he turned into a hen. Not any hen – one with no head. And then I woke up in my bed. It had all been a terrible dream occasioned by too much ice cream. So, tinies, make sure you behave yourselves, or you’ll be beset by hens and elves, by a headless hen, and a terrible elf who looks exactly like Will Self.