Urban Troll

Living under bridges and eating Billy Goats Gruff was all very well for a troll in the middle ages - if you were lucky you might also get the fingers of someone doing their washing in the river.

Trolls were big, hairy and scary, and if you saw one you clippety-clopped pretty sharpish out of the way.

However as civilsation made advances in animal husbandry and household utilities the species had to adapt. Intially trolls migrated to live near the village pump, scavenging on what could be found - old crusts of mouldy bread, lumpy custard, flowers and the suchlike.

In these days of progress, village pumps are hard to find, and there are few water-troughs frequented by the squire's mare.

Nowadays, colonies of trolls live under washing-machine factories, out on the industrial estates throughout the world. In order to go undetected, over the years trolls have become smaller and smaller and now relatively closely resemble those troll toys that were quite popular in the 80's.

(Truth be told, some of them were real and they're pretty cross about the places people stuck their pencils).;

Each troll leaves the factory concealed in a washing machine, and lurks unseen.

Their diet now consists of rogue socks and that skimpy lace thing that you're sure you had when you loaded the machine, but haven't seen since.

Tights and stockings confuse trolls, as do long sleeves, to the point where they become quite angry.

This is why so many clothes are knotted up together when you empty the machine.

As too many bleaching agents are harmful to their digestion, todays ecologists and animal experts strongly recommend that you avoid those gelatin-based sachets of lurid liquid and instead use some good old friendly 'green' products.

The same goes for fabric conditioner, but it's not that that makes your towels go all squeaky, oh no,that's the troll mucus caused by an allergic reaction to 'summer meadow' or 'mountain sream' fragrance. They know it's nothing like a meadow or a stream, you know it's nothing like a meadow or a stream , so why not cut the crap out before you end up with holes in your pants as the trolls chew them up?