Hobbling to the door she was about to open it, when she thought "Hang on, hang on! That narrator's got it all wrong. Winter can't have a nadir, can't it? Bollocks to that!"

She turned away from the door in search of tsuwm's online copy of the OED to prove her point to the young whippersnapper who'd had the temerity to (a) begin a story which made her get out of her chair by the fire on a cold night, and (b) abused the language to the point where she couldn't even bring herself to follow the plot, slim though it was.

She failed to notice that the faint rapping she'd heard at the door was only faint because she'd turned Dr Bill's stolen hearing aid off. (Gyppos are notorious for stealing hearing aids in California.) In fact, the door was being splintered by repeated heavy blows of a half-axe (or ax, if you're American, of course, but then, of course, if you're a gypsy you ain't in the US, are you?).

Engrossed in booting up her late-model ENIAC word-processor, bought second-hand from a carboot salesman who'd just happened to have 35 large lorries with him that day, she also failed to notice the door finally give way, fall in pieces on the floor and generally give up the ghost.

She did, however, notice a faint draught. She didn't really feel all that cold, because being a smart old gypsy woman, she'd reinforced the warmth provided by the fireplace by dropping a tab of the finest Ecstasy that Transylvanian Draco Blood and Supermarket food coupons can buy. But the unexpected draught was enough to make her turn around in time to see ...


The idiot also known as Capfka ...