This week in The Dabbler I address the important topic of mud idol maintenance, with some simple tips on sprucing up your talismanic fetish object. This is the first article in a projected series intended to cover everything a sane person might wish to know about the subject. My people are currently in talks with a publisher, with a view to issuing the complete set as a part-work, building week by week into an exhaustive mud idol encyclopaedia, to be slotted in to ring-binders, eventually taking up an implausible amount of shelf-space. The marketing people insist that something like this will only sell if there is a “free gift” every week, so we are looking at the idea of giving away sachets of mud, sourced from a bog of mystic legend. If any readers can suggest an apt bog, please get in touch via your spirit medium.