Here are some good cures for slugs in the garden:

1. Set a few magnets (natural magnets do best; perhaps a lodestone or an rubbed brush of horse hair) near the affected plants. Then, the slugs will occupy themselves by playing with the magnet, and will forget about eating your plants.

2. With a small knife, make a half-inch slit on the stem of each plant. Once the plants dry up, the slugs will have no recourse but to go elsewhere.

3. Violently stab at the garden once a week with a hoe, or whack it with a hammer or shovel. Within a month, the effect will be the same as if a minor nuclear weapon had localised itself on your garden. Bye-bye, slugs!

4. Set up a battery-operated transistor radio at the edge of the garden and set it only to MOR adult contemporary stations. If there's anything slugs hate more than salt, it's Phil Collins. (Ear plugs are recommended for this operation.)

5. Run a moderate electric shock through your garden every fifteen minutes. We recommend hooking the ground up to a car battery or, for those do-it-yourselfers, attaching it to a fallen live wire. This will singe the plants to such an extent that the slugs will most likely leave the garden, probably entering the house to find food.

6. With a standard-issue blow torch . . .