It is always with a profound frisson of delight that I recall my first encounter with an elf. A few days after Christmas 1955, my maternal grandmother took me on an elf-watch. Dawn glimmered only faintly, and it was cold, with frost thick on the ground. We entered the woods opposite our house and, after what seemed like a great deal of walking, found small footprints in the frosty sheen on the path. We stopped to sit quietly on a log and waited.
After 20 shivering minutes, we heard a faint rustling and glimpsed a small figure, barely 38 centimetres high, darting behind a hollow oak. I have been fortunate enough to have seen elves on three further occasions, at least beating my record for ball-lightning, which I have encountered only twice. (Some things it has never been my privilege to see, despite years of searching, notably the cannon-ball fungus, , famous for propelling small balls of spores at eyeball-threatening
