Hockey.

It looks like the last days of spring. Although if my memory of past years is accurate, summer only lasts three weeks in a good year, so according to my calculations, we should be looking into winter this time next month. I hope it is a good year.

My cousin Gary got a job as a reporter with a radio station. He’d always wanted to work on the radio, but he never realised it would be so boring. They’d send him out to talk to people on the street, to get their opinions on current affairs or events. Most people refused to talk to him. He liked those people. He came to hate the people who agreed to talk because they rambled on for ages. He’d have a pain in his head from listening to them and a pain in his arm from holding up the microphone. There was an obvious way to ease the pain in his head: don’t listen to them. And he found a way of easing the pain in his arm too. He got a fake arm to hold the microphone, and he put a glove on the hand so people would think it had been injured in some way. No one ever asked him about that. His free hand was inside his coat holding a can of beer with a straw in it. As the interviewee rambled on he’d drink the beer, which further increased his ability to ignore them. One day he asked a young woman a question about the environment, and she was only too happy to express her opinions. But as Gary drank from his can he started to wonder if she was talking about the environment at all. He heard words like ‘hockey’ and ‘bread’ in there. When she finally stopped talking he said to her, “I’m having trouble with the tape recorder. Let me rewind it to make sure it came out properly.” So he rewound the tape and played it, and this time he listened. She was talking about her hockey team and their rivalry with a team they’ve played four times over the past three weeks. They’ve started betting on the games, but they all think that gambling is wrong, so they bet bread instead of money. Playing for bread seemed like a charity sort of thing to do, and it definitely didn’t feel like gambling. But the games have become even more competitive, and she said there was a huge amount of bread riding on the outcome of the game they were playing that day. When Gary had listened to this on the tape recorder, she asked him if he’d like to watch the game and he said he’d love to, so he went to the hockey pitch with her. Normally he’d have thought that watching hockey would be about as interesting as listening to someone talk for half an hour about a snail stuck to a tree, but this one sounded interesting, and it would get him out of listening to someone talk for half an hour about a snail stuck to a tree. The match lived up to his expectations. It descended into violence in the middle of the second half. Gary said into the microphone, “A melee seems to have developed near the half-way line. Lots of kicking and swinging of sticks. It really is a sight to behold.” He was holding the microphone in his right ‘fake’ hand, but he took it in his left hand so he could hold it out towards the fight, hoping he’d record some of the things they were saying. When he noticed a hockey ball flying in his direction he tried to raise his right hand to block it, and for a split second he wondered why his right hand wasn’t moving, but then the ball hit him on the head and he fell over, his left hand still holding out the microphone and his right hand held in front of him. The fight stopped and they all came over to see if he was okay. One of them poked him with a hockey stick but he didn’t move. She said, “Let’s just leave him in the car park and get on with our fight.” Just as they were about to drag him away, he regained consciousness. When he asked what had happened, one of the players said, “You were hit by the ball and we were about to give you first aid.” Gary rewound the tape and pressed play. The players were all embarrassed because they knew he’d get to the bit where they suggested leaving him in the car park, and there was also the embarrassment of their fight before they got to that bit. The fight had started when one of the players said that an opponent looked like an ostrich when she ran after the ball. Gary was smiling as he listened to the bit about leaving him in the car park. The hockey players all looked away, but he just said, “All that talk of an ostrich reminds me of, ah, wait a second…” He pressed record and said into the microphone, “I’m reminded of the time I was talking to my uncle Cyril and he was telling me about the place he lost his glasses. And then he said, ‘It was the same place I lost the ostrich.’ Now that sounded a bit odd to me. I said to him, ‘How did you lose the…’ I was going to say ostrich, but I thought, no, he probably didn’t mention an ostrich at all, so I said ‘glasses’ instead, and he said, ‘The ostrich took them.’ That made perfect sense to me at the time, but when I was thinking about it later I thought, no, that doesn’t make a lot of sense at all. Then his dog started eating the phonebook, so we took him out in the back garden. He seemed to miss the phonebook there, so we gave him a rake, but he wouldn’t even touch that. We experimented with a few different things, and we found that a paint brush was the best substitute for the phonebook. And then the ostrich walked into the shed and Uncle Cyril said, ‘That’s because he’s wearing my glasses.’ And that made perfect sense.” As Gary was telling this story, the hockey players were talking amongst themselves. They were all very keen on keeping this recording off the radio, so they decided to physically force Gary into handing it over. They thought they could easily overpower him because there was obviously something wrong with his right arm. So when Gary got to the end of the ostrich story they attacked him, but the struggle didn’t last long. When they discovered the real arm they all ran off in shock. Gary ran back to the radio station to be in time for the broadcast. He got there just seconds before the start of the programme and he told the producer that this recording was dynamite. Listeners to the show heard about the hockey teams playing for bread, then the fight and Gary’s accident. They heard the players talking about leaving him in the car park and then Gary’s story about the ostrich. Just after this they heard a struggle and one of the players saying, “What’s that under his coat? Oh my God!” The tape ended with lots of young women screaming, their screams fading as they ran away. Gary got his own show out of it.

The moose’s head over the fireplace doesn’t get on with the wife’s niece. She does her best to annoy him. Normally she accomplishes that with her presence. She’s started ringing the bell on her bike when she cycles around the house. She thinks it’ll annoy the moose’s head because it’s a constant reminder that she’s around, but he loves the sound because it’s a constant reminder that she’s outside.

The Turkey.

I found an old coin in the garden when I was digging up a flower bed. I once found a spoon in the same area. I don’t know what that says about the people who once lived here. It probably just says something about their use of coins and spoons.

My aunt Bridget once got a present of a turkey from a friend of hers, but the turkey was a little bit too alive for Bridget’s liking, and she wasn’t keen on killing it. The friend said she’d kill it for her, but Bridget said, “No, no. I don’t mind killing it at all.” Killing a turkey seemed like a thing everyone should be more than willing to do, and she didn’t want to admit her reluctance. She looked in her cookery book to see how long she’d have to leave it in the oven for, and she hoped she’d find some advice on killing turkeys in there too, but there was nothing, and she wondered if the turkey would ever make it as far as the oven. She became angry with the turkey for being so difficult to kill. She’d lecture it, listing out all the problems he was causing her, and a few of them couldn’t really be blamed on the turkey, like that rattling sound coming from the engine of her car. It became even more difficult to kill the turkey after he became friends with their pet peacock. They used to walk around the garden together, frightening the cat or playing hide-and-seek. The turkey often hid under a box, and the peacock could never find him in the box. One day Bridget was sitting at the kitchen table with the stapler in her hand, absent-mindedly stapling something, and when she looked at what she was doing she realised that she’d stapled a photo of the turkey to the cookery book. She took it outside, showed it to the turkey and said, “Look what I did without even thinking about what I was doing. Now what does that tell you?” It didn’t seem to tell the turkey anything - he just stared back at her. She asked Louise, my cousin Mike’s wife, how she was going to kill her geese, and Louise said, “Kill?” “Yeah, so you can eat them.” “Eat!” Bridget thought she’d ever find a way of killing it, and she had no idea how she’d explain this to the friend who gave her the turkey. Her nephew, my cousin Hugh, went to visit them one day. He was talking to Bridget’s son, Ronan, in the front garden. Hugh noticed a Frisbee stuck in the ivy on the front of the house and he asked how it got there. Ronan said, “I was playing Frisbee with the dog the other day, and the wind must have blown it off-course.” “Why did you leave it there?” “I’m not all that keen on heights.” Hugh said he’d get it, so they went to the shed to get the ladder. When Hugh was climbing the ladder he passed a window over the front door and his shadow climbed the wall in the hall. The dog was sitting in the hall and he looked at the shadow moving up. Bridget’s daughter, Nicola, was playing the piano inside. She was moving up the scale as Hugh was going up the ladder, and when she looked to her right she saw the dog in the hall, slowly raising his head as she played. Her fingers slowed. Hugh could hear the sound of the piano, and he slowed down on his way up the ladder as Nicola’s playing slowed. The dog’s head moved slower too, and when Nicola moved back down the scale, Hugh moved down the ladder and the dog’s head went down too. When Nicola went back up a few notes, the dog’s head rose again. She kept going up and down, moving very slowly or very quickly, and the dog’s head always followed because Hugh was moving with the sound. Bridget looked out the front window and saw the turkey playing hide-and-seek with the peacock. The peacock would walk away and a box would follow him. Then the peacock would stop and look around, and the box would stop too. When the peacock moved away again the box moved too. Bridget turned on the TV. She watched the snooker for a few minutes, but one of the players was taking ages to shoot. As he prepared to take a shot he’d move the cue back and forwards about ten times, getting slower and slower all the time, and then he’d stop moving completely for about ten seconds before striking the cue ball. As Bridget looked at this she forgot what she was going to do before she turned on the TV. She turned it off and tried to think, but then she heard the sound of the piano, moving up and down, getting slower and slower all the time, and then there was complete silence for about ten seconds. She suddenly remembered what she was going to do and shouted, “The ironing!” Nicola got a shock and put both of her hands down on the keyboard. The dog started barking and Hugh nearly fell off the ladder. He fell forward, but he managed to drag himself back, but then he dragged himself back too far and fell backwards. His fall was broken by a box. When Bridget went outside she saw the flattened box and feathers gently floating to the ground. She stared at it in silence for a few seconds, but then tears welled in her eyes. “He was a great little fella. He was so friendly, and so full of life. He always looked as if he was smiling.” The peacock came around the corner and looked at Bridget. “Your poor little friend is gone,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re too stupid to look in the box.” She broke down in tears, but then she noticed that the peacock wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking at something behind her. She turned around and there was the turkey. She dried her eyes and said, “I hope you understand sarcasm. I knew you were there all along and I was just being sarcastic. Oh no, the poor little turkey is dead, and I was trying to kill him, what am I going to do?” The turkey just looked back at her, as if he didn’t believe what she was saying. That’s the impression she got anyway, so she went inside.

The moose’s head over the fireplace seems to be enjoying the snooker from the World Snooker Championships at the moment. He likes snooker, but tennis just bores him. He hears the sound of the ball being hit back and forth all the time and it puts him to sleep, but snooker is much more unpredictable. He’d probably be even more appreciative of ladders falling on turkeys. Although in fairness, he does seem to understand the ‘miss’ rule.

The Speed of Light.

Some of the garden furniture could do with a coat of white paint, the things that are meant to be white. The roof of the shed is meant to keep out the rain, and I have a feeling I’ll be the one who has to talk it into doing its job properly.

My cousin June got a new glasshouse and a few of the relatives came around to see it in the evening. Her cousin Jane was there, and she came across a note in the kitchen that just said ‘Jane’. She read it and looked around her. She looked at the other side of the note, but it was blank. She read the note again, but she still couldn’t figure out how to respond to it. From another room, June said, “What time is it, Jane?” She looked all around her but she couldn’t see anyone, and she answered nervously. “It’s nearly eight.” Then she went outside to the people looking at the glasshouse. June’s kids, Daisy and Graham, had seen a Punch and Judy show earlier in the day, but the Judy puppet had gone missing before the performance, and the puppeteer replaced it with a jam jar. Most of Judy’s lines seemed inappropriate coming from a jam jar, so he changed it, making it up as he went along. Punch asked the jam jar what she’d been doing for the day, and the jam jar said, “Not much really. Just holding jam.” And then Punch asked her if she’d like to sit in the cupboard for a while and she said, “No thanks.” There was a long silence after that, until Punch said, “I really like that... hat you’re wearing.” When Daisy and Graham got home, they created a puppet show of their own with a jam jar and a sugar bowl. The bowl asked the jam jar if it plays football and the jam jar said that was a stupid question. Then the sugar bowl, through Graham, said, “I was just trying to make conversation.” Daisy added in another character, a phone book, who said, “Well the jam jar was just trying to say that she doesn’t want to talk to you.” Graham remembered a TV show about a boy with a table lamp that he used as a torch. The table lamp was on an extension lead, and they used to get into all sorts of adventures. At the start, the boy would say, “That extension lead must be really long.” Then they’d move further away from the house and he’d say, “That extension lead must be really, really long.” By the end they’d have moved much further away and he’d say, “That extension lead must be really, really, really, really, really, really long.” Graham picked up a lamp and said, “That jam jar must be really stupid.” Daisy picked up a spoon and said, “I’m a mouse. I’m stupid and I was able to steal sugar from the sugar bowl while it was asleep.” Graham picked up a video cassette and said, “I’m a cat. I’m really lazy and I sleep all day, and I was still able to kill that mouse.” Then he moved the table lamp around with his other hand and said, “That mouse must be really, really stupid.” The puppet show went on in a similar vein. Characters such as geese, bears, cows and butterflies appeared, played by things such as the fridge, bits of cutlery or newspapers. Outside in the back garden, someone asked Jane what the speed of light is. She looked at the note and said, “About a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second.” The others just stared at her. “I mean...” She looked at the note again, then she noticed a squirrel staring at her too. “Why is that squirrel staring at me?” She pointed at the squirrel and they looked towards it. Jane ran away. The kids had taken their puppet show to another room in the house, where their parents were talking to Uncle Harry and Aunt Bridget, who had come to see the glasshouse too. Jane went there and looked at the note again. It still just said ‘Jane’. When the people she’d been talking to at the glasshouse came inside, one of them said to her, “I think you were right about the speed of light.” She looked at the note again, and when she looked up, everyone was staring at her. She pointed towards the opposite wall and said, “Look at the squirrel.” She ran from the room, even though they kept staring at her. Only Daisy and Graham looked towards the wall. Graham thought she was pointing at a painting of a harbour there and he said, “That squirrel must be really, really, really, really, really, really stupid,” moving the lamp around a bit as he spoke. The kids were starting to run out of potential actors in this room, so they went back to the kitchen. Daisy picked up a stapler and said, “I’m a deer, and I once saw that wolf fall over when it tried to think of something.” Graham was starting to get confused. He thought a fork was already playing the deer, and he couldn’t remember who was playing the wolf. Jane had left the note on the cooker. When Graham saw it, he got the blackbird (a pencil) in his hand to say, “Jane, do you think that if the jam jar got its head stuck in a rabbit hole...” Jane walked into the room then. Graham stopped and looked at her, then looked back at the cooker. He was more confused than ever then. He was already having trouble keeping track of what was what, and he found it very difficult to determine which one was the real Jane. In the end he turned back towards the cooker and said, “Jane, do you think...” Daisy said, “That boy must be really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid.” Jane just ran from the house screaming.

The moose’s head over the fireplace is looking very smug after I lost heavily in a game of Scrabble again. He looks over my shoulder in these games, and I can sense that pitying look every time I form a word. I once spent a game trying to get the words ‘stupid’ and ‘moose’ but I mis-spelt ‘stupid’. I avoided eye contact with the moose for a few days after that.

Moo

The insects are coming out again. Bees in the air and all that. Their good friends the birds are upset about something. You’d think they’d be happy with the changing of the seasons, but for some reason, most of the birds in the garden seem to be fighting with each other. I think the dog is starting to feel left out.

My cousin Mike bought a boat off a man who used to laugh a lot in the pub. He laughed a lot after he sold the boat to Mike, and when Mike woke on the following morning he had a bad feeling about the boat, but it turned out to be in perfect condition. It was actually a bit of a bargain. On one Saturday in July he invited his cousin Hector for a trip on the boat. Mike’s son Scott came along too, and Hector brought his twin daughters, Alice and Grace. Alice was nervous about going out on the boat, but her nerves were eased when she thought of a red sweater she had with an image of a clock on the front of it. She wore that, and she felt much calmer about being on the water then. When they were on the boat, her sister asked her why she was wearing a sweater with a clock on it. She said, “Y’ see...” That’s when she really thought about it, and she couldn’t explain it. She looked at her watch and she realised that she was confusing a clock with a compass. The idea of a sweater with a compass would ease her nerves, but a clock or a watch would be completely useless in determining your position if you got lost on the water. And when she really thought about it, an image of a compass on a sweater wouldn’t help either. She was more nervous than ever, but then she noticed another boat going past them. There was a cow on the boat, and a woman on the boat had a T-shirt with an image of a cow on it. Alice stared at the cow and the cow stared back at her. The cow seemed completely calm, and this made Alice relax again. So the next time they went out on the boat, she wore a sweater with a cow on it and she brought a tiny plastic cow. They found a potato on the boat and the kids made it into a little head - they used buttons for its eyes and a paper clip for the nose. They got the potato head to talk to the plastic cow, but the cow only ever said ‘moo’. They were starting to get bored with this game when a seagull landed on the boat and attacked the potato. Alice held the cow in front of the seagull and said ‘moo’ over and over again. After a few seconds of this, the seagull started to calm down. He stared at the cow. Alice kept saying ‘moo’ and the gull remained completely still. When Mike went down to that end of the boat he didn’t notice the seagull at all. When he spoke, the bird seemed to get a shock. It flapped its wings and looked all around. Mike got a much bigger shock. He stepped backwards and fell overboard. Hector tried to pull him back in, but he fell into the water too. The kids looked over the side as the two of them splashed around in the water. Alice held the cow out and said, “Moo… Mooooo… Mooooooo.” Grace and Scott joined in the mooing. The seagull just looked over the side. Hector and Mike wondered why they were doing this. They stopped splashing about so much and they realised they were in just a few feet of water. They stood up. “See!” Alice said. Hector and Mike both knew that everyone would hear how they were saved in a few feet of water by the kids saying ‘moo’ over and over again, and so it proved. Alice would hold up the cow when the kids told the story.

The moose’s head over the fireplace seems to be trying his best to look out the window. When the wife’s uncle was here, he stood at the window, nodded towards his car outside and said, “Elvis once tried to jump over that, but he missed. At least he said he was Elvis.” I’ve explained to the moose’s head that it was just a car and it probably wasn’t Elvis, but he’s still trying to look out the window. I’ve also told him that the car isn’t even there anymore.