A Little Bit Grimm . . .

By day, this house looks wonderful, a dream awaiting the hands of a loving renovator. When the sun goes down and the winds blow cold from the north and the gloom descends, it presents an altogether different, almost nightmarish, vision. After a couple of drinks, I can see the Grimm brothers sitting inside laughing and drinking and thinking of ever-more gruesome tales of childhoods-gone-insane, stories that will tickle the imagination of the young and fire their parents into a censorious lather.

Did you know, for example, that the original version of Snow White wasn't the sanitised trash visited upon the last four generations of brain-damaged Western suburbia by the Disney gang. Nope, it could better be described as full-bloodied murder and mayhem, climaxing - according to Wikipedia - with "the stepmother dancing at Snow White's wedding wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes that kill her."

Wonderful stuff. I know which version Cameron (aged 5) would prefer. Still he loves the Gruesome Tale of Monty Maggot and delights in singing the fiendishly evil accompanying verses (howled loosely to the cloying tune of Cliff Richard's inane 1961 classic, The Young Ones) - Listen and Watch). Poor child, he has no hope of redemption . . .