I was 13 years old when I first encountered

I was 13 years old when I first encountered my doppelgänger. Walking down the high street, on my way to the post box, he peeled off from the wall where he had been loitering and

briskly followed me home. It wasn't that I hadn't been aware of his presence in the past, it was just that now I had experienced the encounter that changes a boy into

a garden gnome. Paralyzed, all I could do was watch as a French widower placed me in his garden. One day, his quirky but diffident daughter shipped me off to Prague, the first of

many cold nights in Central European gardens. The final insult was when a tiny fishing rod was inserted into my paralysed fist & I was repainted & sold to GnomeWorld-Vienna, an off

icial Austrian garden gnome vendor. I was put on the shelf with dozens of pathetic little figurines. I couldn't move while obese overseas tourists would rudely palpate my tiny rod.

Eventually my tiny rod had been handled by so many tourists that it began to lose its shiny patina. The gnome vendor didn't gnow what to do with an errant gnic gnac's paddy whack.

So he threw it into the river, where what was left of it's magic gave birth to many tiny mer-people with gnome faces. This is how I became the father of the mer-gnomes. My many

children are going to be hungry and it is my job to feed them all. Tonight is a perfect night to go on a stroll in the woods and fetch some food. I just need to be careful about

the snake pit beyond those raspberry bushes. I'm horrified of snakes but I have to get the berries back to those kids.... I was almost out of the woods when

a snake bit me in the ankle. I screamed but did not drop the berries. "Why, snake, why?" The snake said, "Your ankle just looked so delicious." A kid with a shovel took care of it.