I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome.” So begins the extract from Bram Stoker’s novel, breathlessly read by Richard E Grant at www.penguinremixed.co.uk. At this clever site, you can download audio samples, mix them with music you’ve created and enter a competition: the best compositions will win MP3 players. You can also buy audio books. A Long Way Down, the novel Nick Hornby sold to Hollywood before it was published, costs £13 on CD or £10 on tape.

Hornby’s characters are all suicidal and in serious need of cheering up. They clearly haven’t visited www.umbrellaart.co.uk, a sunny site for rainy days, with beautiful brollies from £16 and Groovy Pink wellies (pictured) for £36. You would have to be a sour plum not to like www.sugarboy.co.uk, which sells every kind of old-fashioned sweet, boiled, chocolate or sherbet: 100g of aniseed balls, sherbet lemons or pink shrimps costs about £1.

If Sugarboy brings out your inner 10-year-old, then the elegant www.gentlemanstonic.co.uk will make you sit up straight as soon as you see it. There is an art to men’s grooming, and this site looks as though it has been laid out by a gent’s e-gentleman. Razor-bump repair costs £18.50 and Pre-Op soap, for sweet-smelling but sanitised hands, is £10.

Finally, forget fish knives at the next wedding you go to. Instead, persuade the happy couple to register at www.weddinglistgiving.com, where guests can donate to charities such as Send a Cow — and £40 will buy an African farmer a new beehive.

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