IT WAS A HOT, HOT SUNNY DAY – all due to the greenhouse effect. Even the flies were shagged out and fast asleep.

Alice and her sister, Brian – sat reading Viz and Brain Damage beneath the welcome shade of a huge horse chestnut tree in one of the few precariously preserved parks left, owing to deforestation for mass house-production.

In the almost airless heat, Alice began to feel a little drowsy and the smutty frivolities on the page in front of her were starting to blur, when a flash of something white and bright at one corner of her vision, caught her attention . . .