The prefab on our westerly, Bristol side is occupied by a dynamic do-it-your-self action man who moved here from London. Within days of his arrival he had bulldozed his entire back garden away to make space for a garage. "No car yet, but what a garage!" is what the local wags say. Surly, agitated, arrow-edged looks are fired off at anyone who dares to cross his path. They are left in no doubt that he is itching to bulloze them away as well.
The mercurial Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic in prefab number 3 is the yang to action man's ying. The only garages he has bulldozed away are the ones he has created in his imagination. Every prefab estate has at least one budding literary talent (always unrecognised) whose free time is spent staring at corrugated coalhouses and waiting for inspiration. Not that Dai is totally unrecognised anymore. Since his breakthrough in the summer of 1956 Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic the 'Welsh Hegelian' (as he was originally known) has been gathering up chippings from the statue of fame by penning his 'Conjectures' columns in the Twiverton Literary Supplement (or the TLS as it is internationally known).
Strangely enough it was Dai's old bete noir - Idris Pitman, Member of Parliament for Twiverton and North-East Somerset - who helped secure the prefab radical his sinecure on the TLS. "Idris is to myself and the TLS as Lord Beaverbrook was to the Daily Express and Michael Foot!" Dai once said. "And just as AJP Taylor was always on hand to give a few quid to Dylan Thomas, so I know that Idris will always lend a helping hand when I am on the floor!"
People always ask how Dai acquired his 'Tolstoy' middle name. This goes back to the first TLS 'Conjectures' column he wrote. This rambling piece began by pointing out that children from poor families are five times more likely to die in road 'accidents' than those from the middle class. Then it asked whether "we can really talk of anything being an accident?" Finally he
asked readers to chew over Tolstoy's ideas about misery and happiness. According to Tolstoy misery comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but there is something about happiness which makes it always feel the same. This struck a chord with TLS readers, and Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic has been writing his 'Conjectures' column ever since.

"All happy prefabs are alike, but an unhappy prefab is unhappy after its own fashion."