My mother and I both heard “someone” walk, at dead of night, from close by my swathed and wakeful head, along the corridor and down the stairs through two locked doors.But the most chilling tale belongs to my brother Hereward, who was so scarred by the experience that he spent a decade sleeping surrounded by crucifixes, like a scene from The Omen. He heard a cart come up the hill and stop outside the pub, followed by the scrunch of footsteps and the slow but determined sound of someone advancing on him Doors opened, floorboards creaked. White-knuckled, he gripped the covers over his head (a family trait) and was frozen with terror, utterly unable to call out. When the ghoul reached his bedside it lunged for his sheets and a violent tussle ensued The force proved overwhelming and my brother lost his grip And there before him, as clear as day, he saw .. Well, it’s changed a little over the years When Hereward was six he was quite sure it was “a skeleton”.

Now he’s 30 it sounds much closer to “a face of crumpled linen”. Bad blood Talking of vile manifestations, can you think of anything sneakier than Crimestoppers’ initiative encouraging people to shop suspected drink-drivers to the police for cash rewards? Now nothing is big or clever about weaving your vehicle into the school bus, but, if you think some moron’s about to do just that, the correct procedure is to wrestle them to the ground and grab their car keys.My father had no problem with confiscating car keys from errant customers in his days as a pub landlord. The occasional ingrate would swear at him but, as far as we know, no one ever left our pub en route to a major collision. What is so dispiriting about the Crimestoppers’ plan is that it is aimed at people’s venal instincts as if there were no point in appealing to their moral ones.

And it’s open to spiteful abuse, like the Department for Work and Pensions scheme that encourages people to snoop on their neighbours’ benefit claims. These initiatives are better suited to the Stasi than a democracy.My indignation is only partly fuelled by the fact that I may, once or twice, have been misguided enough to get into my car when I’d had a bevy or two and thought it would not affect my customary road-wrangling. The trouble is that this sort of cocky drivel only occurs to you when you are drunk. Which is why friends were invented: to tell you, when necessary, that you are an inebriated twit. If, despite their best efforts, you drink and drive this New Year, you will only have yourself to blame if you find yourself wrapped round a tree with a breathalyser dangling centimetres from your broken nose and a two-year ban pending.

However, people don’t always get their just desserts – here’s a seasonal anti-morality tale to cheer up miscreants everywhere.Two years ago, my younger sister careered into a tree after an all-night party, having volunteered to go to buy cigarettes for equally blotto friends (NB: if your friends are also drunk as skunks, they’re no use at all). My lawyer uncle agreed to defend her in the court case, but I was amazed to find that, instead of advising my sister to plead “guilty as sin”, he had decided to tell the magistrate “her human rights had been abused”.”Do you mean,” I asked, “her inalienable right to attack trees with an ancient Ford Escort?” envisaging an irate judge sending her down for a life term. “No, no,” he said crossly, “they’ve abused her blood sample.” Drink-drivers have a right to have their blood sample taken to an independent expert for a second opinion. But by the time the bumbling Crown Prosecution Service brought my sister’s case to court, her sample had deteriorated beyond any expert’s necromancy. Thus, my uncle argued triumphantly, my sister’s right to have another person confirm that she was a lush had been disgracefully traduced. And the magistrate agreed with him.I relayed this staggering news to a group of friends in a bar “Cool,” said one Australian girl.