Birds

It’s been a little bit less wintry lately. I was able to cut the grass again. I did the front on one evening and the back on the next, and I just about managed to get them finished before it got dark. The sky was full of stars by the time I put the rake back in the shed.

My cousin Jane was once going out with a man called Joe, and things were going very well until she was making the dinner one day. She was cutting carrots very slowly and carefully, and he said to her, “Let me do that. I used to play the xylophone.” He cut the carrots very quickly and with a lot of force. She thought it was a bit odd, and dangerous too. She wondered if he played the xylophone like that. Joe and Jane often went for walks around a lake with his dog, Spot. Jane loves animals, and the fact that he had a dog was part of the attraction. One day her parents went with them on the walk, and when they got to the end of the path, Joe said to the dog, “Here boy.” A heron looked around, and Joe shouted at it, “I was talking to the bloody dog!” When he noticed everyone looking at him he said, “Sorry about that. I just don’t like birds.” A few days later, Jane was at a friend’s house and a piece of music was on the stereo. They were only half-listening to it, but Jane paid attention when the xylophone came in. In her mind she pictured someone furiously chopping carrots, and she wondered if it was Joe playing on that recording. Her friend told a story about how the man playing the xylophone was attacked by birds during the performance, and he started hitting them but they only attacked him more. Jane thought that it couldn’t be Joe because he loves animals too, and he might not love birds as much as he loves dogs, but surely he’d never hit one. That’s what she tried to tell herself, but she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind, and she knew she’d never be sure until she put him to the test. She had a pet canary, and she decided to let it out of the cage while Joe was in the room, just to see how he’d react. Her grandmother was in the room at the time too. Joe was sitting on the sofa, and he remained very still when he saw the canary. He tried to stay calm, but he always kept an eye on the bird, and he was ready to swing at it with a newspaper if it came anywhere near him. Jane’s grandmother always believed that in every episode of ‘Tom and Jerry’ the cat and the mouse tried to hide the gin. She had an idea that Tweety Pie would always try to protect the gin because she remembered a cat trying to kill it, so she always liked Jane’s canary. The bird was getting closer to Joe, and he was getting ready to swing at it. Jane was watching him all the time. Her cat came into the room and when he saw the canary he slowly moved towards it, ready to pounce. Jane’s grandmother saw the cat, and she kept a very close eye on it. She noticed it moving towards the canary, and she moved very slowly after it. Just as Joe was about to hit the canary with a newspaper, Jane’s grandmother starting swinging at the cat with a cushion. Jane took the cat out of the room and put the canary back in the cage. She wasn’t angry with her grandmother because she was just trying to protect the bird, and she was very impressed with how calm Joe was around the canary.

The moose’s head over the fireplace still has a look of surprise on its face. I painted the room a few days ago, and I put a sheet over the moose’s head so I wouldn’t get any paint on it. When I took the sheet off there was a look of surprise on its face when it saw the new colour. It still has that look, and I can still get the smell of paint in the room.

The Beard.

The wind has been strong for the past few days. Things get blown around the garden, like the watering can, but there’s not much use for that now anyway. The rain does its job. There are a lot of leaves on the wind too.

My cousin Hugh fell in love with Annabel a long time before she fell for him. They’re engaged now, but when he first met her, he had a rival for her affections. She couldn’t decide between Hugh and this other man, Stan. Her parents were very sure about who they wanted her to go for. They thought Stan was much more suitable as a son-in-law than Hugh. There was a rumour going around at the time that Hugh had to grow a beard after stealing a policeman’s hat. When people heard that story, they had a vague idea that the beard had something to do with him being in hiding after stealing the hat, but no one ever really thought about it. Hugh never had a beard. The only thing Annabel’s parents thought about it was that it made him completely unsuitable as a husband for their daughter. Her sister was having a fancy dress party, and she invited both Hugh and Stan to it. Her sister’s son and daughter, Jason and Michelle, were going to the party too. A few weeks earlier, Jason told Michelle that there was a mouse in her doll’s house. She never saw the mouse, but she could imagine it in the tiny rooms, its head inside the windows. She stopped playing with her doll’s house after that, and then one day her mother said there must be a mouse around the house because she had found little holes in cardboard boxes. In her mind Michelle saw the mouse’s head at the window of her doll’s house, and then she imagined it at the window in their living room. She could see its head covering the whole window. This thing must be huge, she thought. Every time she went into a room she put her head around the door first to make sure the mouse wasn’t there, and she went to the fancy dress party as a gladiator so she could use the shield and the sword to protect herself from the mouse. She was going to go as Florence Nightingale, but she thought the mouse wouldn’t be afraid of a lamp. Hugh went as Moses and Stan went as Abraham Lincoln. Someone had the misfortune to go as a rabbit, and when Michelle saw him from behind she thought he was the mouse. She started poking him with her sword, but she stopped when the rabbit made some very un-mouse-like noises. When she saw that it wasn’t the mouse she said, “Oh. Sorry, Mr. Rabbit,” and she walked on. Annabel’s parents were there too. Hugh would have been nervous around them anyway, but her father went as a policeman, and there was something about the sight of a policeman that made my cousin want to be somewhere else. He was drinking a lot to ease his nerves, and he thought he should slow down in case he made a fool of himself, so he went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As he stood at the kitchen sink he looked out the window and saw a tiny light flashing in the sky. He wondered if it was an airplane or a star. He stood there staring at the light, and it was only when the light disappeared thirty seconds later that he figured out it was an airplane. Stars don’t move across the sky like that. He poured the glass of water and walked away, but his fake beard didn’t go with him. While he was standing there, Jason had glued the beard to the sink. He stood there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what he should do, but he could only just about comprehend the situation. As far as he could work out, he was moving and his beard was stationary, and as far as he could remember, beards normally do move with the face they’re attached to, like people in airplanes. But then, we’re all moving, he thought. The world is constantly spinning, so the beard is moving too. He decided to leave the beard where it was, moving with the sink, while he moved back to the party. Everyone else had drunk a lot as well, and no one would notice his missing beard. Or so he thought. Everyone noticed the missing beard after the rumour about him growing a beard. People asked him about it, and he said, “I, ah… I just left it in the kitchen.” The only person not to mention the beard was Annabel’s father. His hat had gone missing, and he said to Hugh, “I’m keeping a very close eye on you.” Hugh went back to the kitchen to get the beard but it was gone. Jason had cut it off the sink, and at that moment in time he was cutting out two small circles from a piece of paper. He wanted to use the beard as a fake mouse to scare his sister, and the paper circles would be the eyes. Michelle thought she heard something move across the floor in one of the rooms upstairs, so she climbed the stairs with her shield in front of her. She slowly opened the door of the room and turned on the light. When she didn’t see the mouse straightaway she thought it mustn’t be there at all, but then she saw it running across the floor and she laughed at it. The mouse was tiny. She picked it up by its tail and said, “Hello, Mr. Mouse.” She took it downstairs and put it into the policeman’s hat that her grandfather was wearing, and then she left the hat right behind her brother. She knew he’d try it on when he found it. Hugh, meanwhile, was trying to solve the problem of finding another beard. He ruled out growing one (after a quick estimation he thought that would take too long), so instead he decided to steal one from someone else, and the first person he saw was Abraham Lincoln. Stan was standing next to a chest of drawers and Hugh saw the perfect opportunity. He went over to talk to Stan, and he casually opened the top drawer. Then he pointed at something on top of the chest of drawers and said, “What’s that?” Stan looked very closely at what Hugh was pointing at, but he couldn’t see anything. He had drunk as much as Hugh, and he stared at it for about thirty seconds, trying to figure out what it was, but he came to the conclusion that it was nothing at all. While he was looking at the spot, his beard was resting in the top drawer, and Hugh slowly closed the drawer on it. Then he pointed at something on the ceiling and said, “What’s that?” Stan looked up, but his beard stayed in the drawer. About thirty seconds later he said, “I can’t see anything,” but by then his beard and Hugh had gone. He didn’t even notice the absence of his beard. When Jason ran to his mother in tears he told her that he had tried on a policeman’s hat, but someone had put a mouse in the hat. Everyone immediately thought of Hugh. They remembered seeing him without the beard earlier. Stealing a hat was bad enough, but putting a mouse in it was surely something that would convince a daughter that he’d be completely unsuitable as a husband. Annabel’s parents were confident that she’d see sense. She was furious with Hugh, and she was ready to tell him where to go as soon as she saw him, but when he walked into the room he was wearing a beard. It was completely different to the one he was wearing earlier, and he looked nothing like Moses in it, but everyone had suspected him of stealing the hat because he didn’t have a beard, so when they saw him with a beard again they thought this suggested that he didn’t do it. No one was entirely sure of this, but it became clear in their minds when Stan walked into the room without a beard. It was he who stole the hat and put the mouse in it. Stan couldn’t figure out why everyone was staring at him. Jason kicked him in the shins. Annabel said to Hugh, “Would you like to go for a walk in the garden?” Her parents were delighted with the choice she made. On the following day she wondered if the fact that Hugh was wearing a beard made it more likely that he stole the hat, but she didn’t care then because she had a great time with Hugh on the night before.

The moose’s head over the fireplace seemed to be looking up at the ceiling when I walked into the room. I poured a brandy and stood at the window, but I turned around when I thought I heard the moose singing ‘Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head’. I couldn’t hear anything when I turned around, but then a few minutes later I thought I heard that tune again.

Christmas Presents.

Winter is just around the corner. Last week it looked as if summer had come back again, but we’re facing into winter now. The wind is cold. I didn’t even try to cut the lawn this week. There were too many showers. I stood in the shed and looked through the dust on the windowpane at the trees blowing in the wind.

My cousin Rachel once went on a holiday to Norway with her boyfriend. Before she went she asked her niece and nephew, Daisy and Graham, if they’d like her to bring something back for them. Daisy said she didn’t mind what present she got, but when Rachel asked Graham, he said, “Some sweets or a hatchet.” She asked him why he wanted a hatchet, and Graham said, “Well I’d rather have the sweets.” So she got sweets for both Daisy and Graham. She phoned her sister while they were in Norway, and she spoke to Daisy on the phone for a few minutes too. She mentioned that they had seen ponies in the snow, and Daisy was very excited by this, so on the following day, Rachel took as many photos as she could of ponies in the snow. The next time she phoned home, she told Daisy about all the photos of the ponies, and Daisy was over the moon. There was a kids’ show on TV at the time about a ski jumper who always tripped over a piece of string or his own shoe laces. He’d spend each episode getting ready for the jump, then he’d trip and lose his confidence. He’d always back out of the jump just before it, but in the last episode he finally made the jump and he flew so far through the air that he landed in the front room of a woman’s house. They fell in love straightaway and got married, and at the very end they showed them on their wedding day, together in a carriage that was pulled by ponies through the snow. Daisy was very angry with this ending. She had watched the whole series and she thought the ending had ruined it because it was completely unbelievable. When her aunt came home from Norway she gave the sweets to Graham and he seemed disappointed. She got the impression that he was hoping for a hatchet, but she was sure that Daisy would love all the photos of ponies in the snow she took. Daisy was still angry about the ski jumper getting married, and the ponies in the snow only reminded her of that. She showed no interest whatsoever in the photos. Christmas was just a few weeks away, and Rachel normally got her niece and nephew surprise presents, but after they were both so disappointed with what she brought back from Norway, she decided to ask them what they wanted this time. Every year, Daisy and Graham’s father brought home a calendar from the company he worked for. On this year, the calendar had twelve photos of sparks. Graham could never figure out why they put sparks on their calendars. The company made flowerpots. Just before Christmas, their father brought home the calendar for the following year, and that one had twelve photos of rabbits. Graham tried to figure out the connection between sparks and rabbits, and how they were both connected to the company that makes flowerpots. He thought that if there’s a connection at all between rabbits and sparks, the rabbits obviously like the sparks because they look very happy in the photos. When Rachel asked him what he wanted for Christmas he said he’d love a rabbit. She doubted that he really wanted a rabbit, after he wanted to a hatchet before, so she asked him if he was sure and he said, “Oh yeah, I’d love a rabbit.” He loved playing with matches. Daisy said she’d like a Barbie car. There was an ad on TV with Barbie and Ken in the car, and it moved by itself. The kids were delighted to get these presents on Christmas Day. They went to the kitchen to play with them. Graham put the rabbit on the table and started lighting matches in front of it, but it didn’t react at all. It didn’t seem happy or sad. Graham looked at the rabbits in the calendar again, and he got the feeling that they didn’t really look happy either. Daisy was disappointed with her present too. She put the car on the floor and put Barbie into it, but it didn’t move at all. Daisy and Graham’s mother, my cousin June, got her husband skis for Christmas because they were going on a skiing holiday in January. The skis were leaning against the kitchen table. Graham had one more go at making the rabbit happy. He lit four matches in front of it. The flame frightened the rabbit, and it jumped backwards. It landed on the skis and slid down, and it landed in the Barbie car on the ground. It flew across the floor and came to a stop when it hit the cat’s basket. The cat jumped up just in time to see the rabbit roll into the basket next to it. The rabbit and the cat just stared at each other. “They’re in love!” Daisy said with a tear in her eye. Rachel came in and asked them if they liked their presents. “He’s fantastic!” Graham said. Daisy struggled to hold back the tears. She said, “This is the best present ever!” Rachel was delighted. She noticed the rabbit in the cat’s basket. They were still staring at each other. “Aw,” she said, “ye’ve put the rabbit and the cat together. That’s so cute. I must get the camera.” Daisy asked if she could see the pony photos again, so Rachel was happier than ever when she went to get her camera. Graham was wondering if it would work better the next time with grease on the skis and on the rabbit.

The moose’s head over the fireplace looked very pleased with himself. I lit the fire for the first time in months and he seemed to like the heat. I could almost imagine a glass of brandy in his hand, if he had a hand. Or a hoof. He’d need a hand instead of a hoof to hold a brandy, and he doesn’t even have a body. I poured a brandy for myself and looked out the window. It was raining again, and completely dark beneath the rain clouds.

An afternoon on the lake.

The lawnmower ran out of petrol with just a small patch of grass left to cut, so I got out the old lawnmower. There’s no engine on this one. You just push it and sweat a lot. After ten minutes I had to take a break. I looked up at a jet making its way across the blue sky, leaving a white trail behind. It was almost soundless, it was so high up. I looked up at the sky until the jet disappeared, then finished the grass.

My cousin Jessica was a very promising artist, but her passion for art waned when she became an art teacher. She never had much of a passion for being an art teacher, and as time went by she became disillusioned with the job. Teaching people how to paint tables wasn’t the career she had envisioned. She went through the motions in the classes, but even that became difficult. At the end of one class she said to her students, “For next week, just… just paint a picture.” Someone said, “Of what?” “Of…” She said the first thing that came into her head. “Beethoven.” And then the second. “Beethoven in a boat.” She completely forgot about this until she saw what they had painted on the following week. The first one was of a man sitting in a row boat, and he did look a bit like Beethoven, but the wig on his head looked nothing like a wig. In another painting, the wig looked more like a mop, and in another one, Jessica thought she could see the handle of a mop. Beethoven was looking at something in the distance in this one, but in another painting he was looking down into the boat, and the head of a woman could be seen looking up at him. She was holding a mop. A few of the paintings showed Beethoven falling out of the boat, and the woman with the mop putting her hand to her mouth. Jessica asked them about it and they told her that a woman in the class lived near a man who looks a bit like Beethoven. So she invited him out in the boat on the lake. She couldn’t think of a way to get him to wear a wig, so that’s where the mop came into it. She had left the mop in the boat. She used to point towards some bushes at the edge of the lake and say, “Look, is that Mozart?” While he was looking at the bushes, she’d hold the mop over his head. The rest of the art class were at the edge of the lake, painting the scene. He saw her with the mop a few times, and he seemed to be suspicious of something. When she hit him on the head with the mop he fell into the water, and that was the end of the ‘sitting’. The class really enjoyed the day, and Jessica was sorry she missed it, but they said they could always do it again with another subject. A woman in the class told them about her husband who had given up smoking a few weeks earlier. He was finding it difficult, and after an evening in the pub he came home and decided to give up giving up smoking for good. He lit his pipe, but after an evening in the pub, his hand to eye coordination wasn’t at its sharpest. Or if you look at it another way, his hand to eye coordination was flawless – instead of putting the pipe in his mouth he put it into his eye. He’s been wearing an eye patch ever since, and everyone has been calling him Long John Silver. The class agreed to have a go at painting him in a boat. It was easy to get him onto the lake. His wife told him that the doctor had said it would do his eye a lot of good. He thought it would do the other eye a lot of good to get away from his wife for a while, so he agreed. She couldn’t think of how to get a parrot on his shoulder without making him suspicious, but they thought they could add that into their paintings later. There was one other boat on the lake at the time. It was a young couple who had been there on the previous afternoon too, when they were talking to a woman in another boat for a while. This was in November and the evenings were starting to close in. When it started to get dark, they looked around but they couldn’t see the other boat – the one with the woman they had just been talking to. He lit a match, held it up and looked around, but she said to him, “What good is that going to do?” He realised that it was a bit of a stupid idea alright, so he said, “I was just going to light my cigarette.” He had never smoked in his life, so obviously she had never seen him smoke before, but he searched through all of his pockets and he pretended to be annoyed when he couldn’t find his cigarettes. He said that he loved smoking on the lake, so he took her back there on the following afternoon just to prove that he really does smoke, and that he loves smoking on the lake. The man in the role of Long John Silver was in the only other boat in the water. He could hear someone coughing, and then he smelled the smoke. He hadn’t smoked since poking his eye with the pipe because he felt that all the trouble with his eye would be a waste of time if he took up smoking again. He would have done anything for a cigarette there on the lake. He followed the other boat and tried to breathe in as much of the smoke as he could, but after a few minutes he noticed that there was an exceptional amount of smoke coming from the boat, and only a small percentage of it was from the cigarette. The man who was smoking had set the boat on fire with a cigarette butt, but thankfully, ‘Long John Silver’ was on hand to rescue them. In the paintings for the art class, some people added in the parrot and chose to represent Long John Silver taking prisoners and setting a boat on fire, but others left the parrot out and painted Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar, watching with his crew as a French ship sank. A division formed between the two groups in the class. On the following week they all went out in boats on the lake, and the tension was clearly visible. Those who had painted Nelson claimed that they were being deliberately rammed by those who had painted the pirate. Jessica never realised that teaching art could be this much fun. Every week they go out on the lake, supposedly to paint scenes from nature, but it’s really just to ram each other in the boats.

The moose’s head over the fireplace stares into space and that’s what I do too. It’s getting dark earlier these evenings. I look into the light blue around a star above the horizon. The moose’s head just has the wall to look at, but he’s not really looking at the wall anyway.

Ask Santa.

The wind picked up and a dark cloud moved overhead. I went to the shed when the first drops of rain fell. I stood inside the door and looked out. I listened to the noise of the rain on the roof. After about ten minutes, it started to ease, and a few minutes later I could see blue sky again.

My cousin June has a son and a daughter, Graham and Daisy. During one summer holidays they played Snap to pass the time, but it got boring when they didn’t win anything, so they started playing for things like stones or ladybirds. The stakes got higher all the time, and by the middle of the summer they were playing for the Atlantic Ocean. They felt that they’d need something more complex than Snap when they were playing for an ocean, but they didn’t know any games more complex than Snap. They both agreed that the only man who could help in a situation like this was Santa. They wrote a letter to Santa asking him to bring them a game that would be appropriate for deciding who wins the Atlantic, but after two weeks they hadn’t heard anything from him. Their mother, my cousin June, had other things on her mind at the time. The road in front of their house was full of potholes, so she wrote to the County Council and asked them to do something about it. They wrote back to her and said that it’s not their responsibility to repair the road because it’s a private road. They said that they’re not entirely sure who owns it, but they know it’s not them, and they don’t exactly own any of the roads, but they own this one even less than the others. And no one really owns the roads. But someone owns this one. When Daisy and Graham lost patience waiting for Santa’s response, they decided to ask someone else for help. There was a show on TV about a pirate with a wooden leg, and a brush on the end of the leg. He used to spend his days sweeping the deck of the ship with his leg. He had a parrot on his shoulder that kept saying, “You missed a bit.” The kids decided to write to the pirate – he’d surely know much more about oceans than Santa. June didn’t post the letter, but she thought that she should write a response. So she used the letter that the Council sent to her. She just re-arranged it a bit and wrote it in the voice of a pirate. It said that no one really owns the oceans, so they can’t play for the Atlantic, but someone owns the road in front of their house. The pirate didn’t know who owned the road, but he knew it wasn’t him. He suggested that they play Snap for the road. June had called up a local radio station to complain about the Council’s response, and they asked her to send in the letter, but she sent in the wrong one. She sent them the one from the pirate, and it was read out on air. It started with ‘Arrr’. People were furious with the Council when they heard this. The letter sounded familiar to the Council, so they accepted that they had written it. Daisy had won the game of Snap, and the Council accepted that she owned the road. She decided to have a tea party on her new road, mainly just to annoy her brother (he wasn’t invited), but it blocked the road for hours. The Council had to buy the road from her, and then June had proof that they owned the road, so they had to repair the potholes as well. She celebrated her victory with a few friends and a few drinks, and on the following morning she had a vague idea that she had sent letters to Santa and the Pope asking for their help in getting the Department of Education to refurbish the school. She knew that she had sent one to the Pope because he was the only one who responded.

The moose’s head over the fireplace stared over my head when I stood in front of it. It seemed to be deep in thought. I had a feeling that one of its eyebrows was slightly raised. I went to the window and looked out for a few minutes, then I went back to the fireplace. I was going to ask the moose’s head a question, but I ended up staring at the eyebrow – I couldn’t even be sure that he had an eyebrow, let alone tell if it was raised – and I forgot what I was going to ask. I went back to the window again and looked out.