It was April when it began.

It might have started earlier, but that was when I noticed the first sign. I was chatting to my mother, the phone in one hand and a pen in the other. It was only when I hung up that I looked down and saw, in thin black strokes, that I’d absently drawn a round little banjo.

And that’s how it started.

When ghosts moved into my house, my first thought was live and let live. Actually, my first thought was, Great, here comes the dementia. My second thought was that I was the victim of some kind of perverted trick, played out by one of my friends. I hoped it was my perverted friend Bob, so I could flatten his nose so bad he’d only smell lip.

But no, these were definitely ghosts.

I’m sitting on the couch watching TV with the kids when the Party Action Party Packrat explodes out of the screen and into our living room.

The kids, of course, go absolutely wild.

“Hello friends!” says the Party Action Party Packrat. His name is Pizza Pete, and you never see it in print without a tm at the end.

Gary divorced Gabriela over what he termed as her ‘lack of support for my shoe choices’. In the settlement, Gabriela kept the house, and Gary moved into the Capri Village Apartments. Now single, he felt freer to explore his shoe preferences. Taking a walk, he noticed a shoe store around the corner. “What a stroke of luck!” declared Gary, eyeing his chipped wobbly clogs.

Theft can be so cliché. “Don’t move.” “Gimme me all your money.” Blah blah blah. Occasionally, however, you run into a criminal with panache. A maverick among the immoral, who surprises with a command like: “Give me those spectacular Italian shoes. Or you’re deader than Olga Knipper.” Now that’ll send you reeling. Especially if you are a Russian symphony conductor with a penchant for Anton Chekhov trivia and weakness for custom leather. Even more so if you don’t realize this information is on your Wikipedia bio.