"I'd given up," said a stunned Sean Hegarty, "and then they appeared."

The flabbergasted author was speaking today after an impromptu afternoon tea with Clive and Samantha, two denizens from the Elaborate Underworld Beneath his house.

Clive, a monkey sized goblin with a broken wing, enjoys lurking. Samantha, a darkened cloud of articulate vapour, drifts back and forth.

"I spent the first twenty minutes just trying not to spill my Earl Grey," said a still shaken Hegarty.

"Actually," said Clive, "he spent the first twenty minutes screaming at us. `Not me,' he kept yelling. `Get the Movable Type people.'"

"I think he really expected us to annihilate them," Samantha added. "As if we were going to whoosh across a vast ocean and track down a couple of software designers we don't know." She laughed with disbelief, before adding "really, it's not the kind of thing we're into."

Clive did admit that destruction of human life was "very much" within their power. "Oh, sure. But that's true of a lot of people, too. Personally, though, I'm just not interested in it. I'd rather hang out with friends. Or lurk. I'm always up for some quality lurking."

Both Clive and Samantha concede that their kind has an image problem, but regarded their chances of improving it as "low."

"We do appreciate being invited to tea, though," Clive added.