A Monkey in a Tuxedo

I was playing fetch with the dog and I threw the stick into a hedge. He couldn't find the stick at all but he found a way of going right through the hedge, and he seemed to enjoy that. I didn't really want to get the stick back anyway.

My Aunt Bridget organised a birthday party for her husband, Uncle Harry, on one Saturday. June and Dan arrived with the kids at about noon. My cousin Jane arrived shortly afterwards, and she went for a walk in the fields with Bridget and Ronan, Bridget’s son. Jane was talking to her aunt all the time, but Ronan wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying. When they got to the top of a hill they stopped and looked around, and no one said anything for about a minute. It was Bridget who eventually broke the silence. She said something to Jane, and then Jane said something in response. Ronan wasn’t paying close attention at first. The words were floating around in his brain for a while before he finally noticed them. The way he remembered it, his mother had said, “Was it here you saw the monkey in the tuxedo?” And Jane said, “That’s right, yeah.” But he wasn’t sure of this, and he didn’t want to ask them in case he looked stupid. The wind was strong, and they walked back towards the house when the dark clouds approached. It started raining, and in the late afternoon they saw the first flash of lightning. Jane was talking to Hugh when the electricity went in the evening. She lit a match, and she was going to look for a candle but she saw what looked like a pony in front of her. She kept looking at that until she had to blow the match out, and then she said to Hugh, “Was that really a pony?” “I think so,” Hugh said. Jane lit another match. The pony was still there, and Jane kept looking at it again until she had to blow out the match. “Wait a minute,” she said, “was that really a pony?” She lit another match, and it still looked like a pony. When Ronan met Jane and Hugh, he decided he had to just ask about the monkey in the tuxedo or else he’d never find out. He said, “I don’t suppose ye’ve seen a monkey in a tuxedo?” Jane said, “No, but we saw a pony.” Ronan said, “Are you sure it wasn’t a monkey in a tuxedo?” And Jane said, “Absolutely… Although… Hugh, was that really a pony?” Hugh was fairly sure it was a pony and absolutely sure it wasn’t a monkey in a tuxedo, but Jane wasn’t convinced. They went to the living room, where Bridget and June were looking for candles, but they hadn’t found any. Bridget went to the kitchen to look for some more there, and Ronan, Jane and Hugh followed her. The pony neighed and trotted across the kitchen tiles, and Jane said, “See! It’s a monkey in a tuxedo.” June was still in the living room. She couldn’t see very much in the dark, but when lightning lit up the room she saw the goldfish bowl on a shelf right in front of her, and the two goldfish were staring at her. She remembered being in this room before when the goldfish were staring at her wherever she went, and it started to annoy her, so she got the cat and put it on the table nearby. The cat would stare at the fish and the fish stared at the cat. June couldn’t see the fish in the darkness and she was fairly sure they couldn’t see her, but the idea of them staring at her still annoyed her, so she put the cat on the table again, and that set her mind at rest. That peace of mind didn’t last long. When Ronan told her that there was a monkey in a tuxedo in the house, June couldn’t help imagining the monkey staring at her. Aunt Bridget finally found a candle in the study, and she went back to the kitchen. She had left a cake on the table, but the cake was in a bit of a mess. She asked Ronan if he knew what had happened to it and he said, “I bet it was the monkey who did it.” “A monkey?” “Yeah. A monkey in a tuxedo.” “Do you think I’m stupid or something?” “No it’s true. Jane, you saw a monkey in a tuxedo, didn’t you?” Jane said, “Well, I’m not absolutely sure about that. It did look a bit like a pony.” Bridget turned to Ronan and said, “A monkey in a tuxedo. That’s the worst excuse you’ve ever come up with.” “It’s not an excuse. I didn’t do anything. It was the monkey.” “Yeah. The monkey.” Ronan and Jane went to the living room. A lightning flash illuminated the cat on the table and Jane said, “Yeah, it’s a monkey in a tuxedo alright.” But Ronan wasn’t so sure about this. In fact, he was almost certain it was a cat, and not a monkey at all. The black and white fur looked a bit like a tuxedo. So it definitely wasn’t a monkey who ate the cake. Ronan had to come up with another story for that because his mother suspected him of it. He went back to the kitchen and said to her, “Now I remember what happened the cake. Someone asked me earlier on if they could have some cake and I said yes. I can’t remember who it was now. But I didn’t know it was this cake. And it must have been this cake that they ate.” “So it wasn’t a monkey in a tuxedo at all?” “No. It must have been the person I was talking to earlier. Actually, I think it was Jane.” “So there’s no monkey?” “No. I’d say not anyway.” Jane came back into the kitchen and said to Bridget, “There’s a monkey in a tuxedo around the house alright. We just saw him. Didn’t we, Ronan?” Ronan said nothing. His mother said to Jane, “Did you have some of this cake earlier?” “No.” “Yeah, I thought so,” Bridget said as she looked at Ronan, and then Jane said, “It was probably the monkey who ate the cake.” “Yeah,” Bridget said, “it was the monkey, wasn’t it, Ronan?” Ronan turned to Jane and said, “It was a cat. You were looking at a cat.” “It wasn’t. It was a monkey. You were the one who first said it was a monkey.” “It’s a cat.” Bridget said to Ronan, “And was it the cat who ate the cake?” Ronan thought about that for a while and then left. He met Hugh in the study and said, “That wasn’t a monkey in a tuxedo at all. It’s a cat.” In another flash of lightning they saw the pony and Hugh said, “Well I think that looks more like a monkey in a tuxedo than a cat.” “It’s not. It’s obviously a cat. You just think it’s a tuxedo because of the black and white fur.” Hugh thought about it and said, “No, it’s more than just the fur.” They left the study, and Hugh bumped into June in the hall. She got a shock, and she told him she was nervous because she can’t stop thinking that a monkey in a tuxedo is staring at her. Hugh said, “We just saw him in the study. At least I think he’s a monkey in a tuxedo. He’s more of a monkey than a cat anyway.” It was then that June thought of putting the cat, the goldfish and the monkey together so they could all stare at each other. She took the goldfish and the cat to the study and left them there, but the cat ran away as soon as he heard the pony. Bridget’s youngest daughter, Nicola, heard the pony too, and she went straight to the study. Hugh also told Jane about the monkey in the study, and she said to Bridget, “If you want to see the monkey in a tuxedo, he’s in the study now.” Ronan overheard this and he said, “Yes, if you want to see the cat, go to the study now.” The three of them went there, and Bridget brought the candle. They walked right past Nicola as she was trying to get her pony up the stairs, but no one noticed. They went into the study and walked very slowly across the floor. As they approached the desk, the candle lit up the two goldfish in the bowl. Bridget said, “Now, which one is the cat and which one is the monkey in a tuxedo?”

The moose’s head over the fireplace has attracted a bit of a fan club. Birds land on the windowsill and stare in at him. They don’t look in the least bit surprised at the sight of a moose’s head, but then they do look surprised when they notice the painting and see a surprised hen looking back at them. You’d think it’d be the other way around.

Climbing a Stepladder

I cut the grass and trimmed the hedges. Some of the garden seats need to be painted. We could do with a bit of rain to get me out of painting them.

My cousin Mike’s wife, Louise, keeps geese, and they’ve almost become part of the family now. Louise has given the geese names and she could never kill them. Their son, Scott, treats them as pets, just like the cat or the dog, but sometimes they don’t do very much. My Aunt Bridget has peacocks, and they can do a lot without much effort just by showing their feathers. The geese had nothing like that, so Scott decided to teach them things, like climbing a stepladder. He put the stepladder up next to one of the geese and pointed to the bottom step. He said, “Climb. Climb.” The goose just stared back at him, so Scott pointed to the top of the ladder and said, “Step onto this. Stand on the steps.” The goose stared back at him for a few seconds and then it stood on a pencil on the ground. Scott put his hand over his eyes and shook his head. He went inside and got an Action Man figure he likes to play with. This Action Man has fangs and wears a cloak. Scott always talks in a Transylvanian accent when he plays with it. He went outside and spoke to the geese in this accent, but they didn’t have a clue what he was saying. In the fields behind the house a film crew were shooting a scene from a film where a man and woman have a picnic in the shade of a tree. They were waiting for the leading lady to arrive, but she hadn’t been seen since dancing on top of a minibus on the night before. After waiting for nearly an hour, a wolf walked onto the set. No one knew what to do at first, but then the director said, “Action,” and they started filming. The leading man still didn’t know what to do. The director told him to improvise, but he wasn’t great at improvising at the best of times, and being confronted by a wolf was far from the best of times. He started saying all the lines he was supposed to say to the leading lady, like ‘you have beautiful eyes’, or ‘I never knew kerb stones could be so interesting’. The director put a hand over his eyes and shook his head. The wolf looked at the actor for a while and then moved on. The film crew followed the wolf and kept filming him. Scott was sitting on the fence at the back of the garden with his Action Man. He saw the wolf coming but he didn’t move. He had been frightened by his aunt’s Jack Russell once when he thought it was a wolf, so he pretended not to be scared of the real wolf, and he stayed sitting on the fence. The wolf stopped a few yards away from Scott and stared at him. Scott didn’t know what to do at first, but then he remembered his Transylvanian Action Man. That seemed as good a way as any to communicate with the wolf, so he started talking in his Transylvanian accent and he moved the Action Man around in his hand as he spoke. He said, “Tonight ve vill travel into town and frighten the horses.” The director thought this was brilliant, and the actor was ashamed of himself for not being able to come up with anything like that. The camera turned on the wolf and everyone waited for his reaction. He just stared back at Scott for a few seconds, and then he stood on a pencil. Scott shook his head and clicked his tongue at the wolf.

The moose’s head over the fireplace always looks annoyed when he listens to documentaries on TV about dolphins and how intelligent they are. No one ever says that about a moose, and yet he seems to understand how this year’s hurling championship works. How many dolphins would know who the losers in the Munster Final will play?

Summer Holidays

I cut the grass a few days ago, before the rain. We definitely had a few days of summer weather before the wind and rain. I’m starting to get the hang of this weather thing. It changes - that’s what I’ve noticed.

My cousin Hector booked a holiday home by the sea for a few weeks in the summer. His daughters, Alice and Grace, wanted to bring their puppy along, but Hector wasn’t too keen on this because of the puppy’s habit of clinging to his leg, so he asked his brother, Albert, to come with them, just to provide another two legs for the puppy to play with. Hector and his wife were hoping that Albert would do a bit of babysitting too. On the first day of their holiday, Albert went water-skiing on a lake. When he had finally managed to stay upright for a few seconds, he looked to his left and saw a woman dressed up as Mary Poppins flying by on water-skis. She was holding an umbrella in one hand. She waved the umbrella at Albert, but he fell over before he even tried to wave back. On the following day, he agreed to look after the puppy and the kids for a few hours. They went to the beach, and the puppy found a better way to pass the time than clinging to legs. He attacked the seaweed but he got tangled up in it almost straightaway. Albert freed him but the puppy started fighting with the seaweed again, and again he got caught up in it. Albert untangled him and told him to stop fighting, but it was just like saying ‘stop clinging to my leg’. Albert had to keep an eye on the girls too. His attention was only diverted away from the puppy and the girls when he looked out to sea and saw a windsurfer, and when he looked closer he saw that it was the woman in the Mary Poppins outfit. She was still dressed as Mary Poppins. When she came back to the beach, Albert told her that he saw her water-skiing yesterday, and she said she remembered him. Her name was Becky, and they were talking for about ten minutes before Albert remembered the kids and the puppy. When he looked around, the puppy was tangled up in the seaweed again and the kids were burying his shoes. Maybe it was just because she was dressed up as Mary Poppins, but Albert thought she’d be able to help him out with the babysitting, so he told her about the trouble he was having. She untangled the puppy and she taught him how to guard the seaweed, instead of fighting it. It worked too. The puppy never got tangled in the seaweed again. He guarded it, like a sheepdog herding sheep, only the seaweed never moved. Sometimes the puppy would move slowly across the sand, crouching low, then he’d jump up and bark. He’d run to the other end of the seaweed to make sure it didn’t escape there. As for the kids, to keep them occupied she told them how to control the puppy when he was guarding the seaweed. So instead of burying shoes, Alice and Grace passed the time by calling out various commands and whistling at the puppy, like farmers with a sheepdog. They weren’t really controlling him at all, but they thought they were. If they felt that the seaweed was unprotected at one side, they’d call and whistle and point, and the puppy took no notice of them but he’d go where they wanted because he could never leave any side of the seaweed unprotected for too long. Albert thought that Becky was even better than the real Mary Poppins, but then he wondered why she was dressed up like that. He asked her and she said, “I had a bet with a friend of mine about a moth. She bet me two hundred quid that the moth wouldn’t be frightened by a bee. We’re always betting on things like that. I thought it would be frightened, but the moth was dead. And I didn’t have the money. I was so sure of winning that I didn’t think about that. So when I couldn’t pay, she made me dress up like this for the rest of the holiday.” Albert asked her if there was anything he could do to return the favour, and she said, “The one thing I most want now is to get out of having to wear this Mary Poppins costume.” Albert was tempted to say that the one thing he most wanted was to help her out of that costume, but he thought it might go down the wrong way. As they stood on the beach, looking at the kids and the puppy guarding the seaweed, Albert came up with the perfect plan. He said, “What if we set up another bet, one that you can’t lose. I’ve never met your friend, so if she were to see me walking along the seafront with the puppy, she’d think I was a stranger. You could just casually say something like, ‘What are the chances of the puppy barking at that bin?’ I’m guessing she’d think it would be unlikely, so then you could suggest a bet - that if the dog barks at the bin, you get out of the costume. And we could put seaweed in the bin to make sure he does.” She was delighted with this. They put the seaweed in the bin straightaway and she went off to get her friend. Albert took the puppy and the kids to the end of the seafront and started walking in the direction of the bin. Becky arrived with her friend and they sat on a bench overlooking the sea. As Albert and co approached the bin, Becky said, “I wonder what are the chances of that dog barking at the bin.” Her friend said, “No chance,” and Becky said, “Do you want to bet on that?” “Okay.” “If the dog barks at the bin, I get out of the costume.” “And what if he doesn’t bark at the bin?” “Ahm… I’ll pay you two hundred quid.” “Alright.” Albert started walking a bit slower as they approached the bin, and the puppy chose this moment to cling to his leg. Albert tried to get him off as he walked on, but the puppy’s attention was focussed completely on the leg rather than on the bin. The girls normally stood back and watched when the puppy clung to legs, but they knew about the plan, so they helped free their uncle’s leg. When they finally removed the puppy, Albert fell backwards over the railing and onto the beach below. When the puppy no longer had a leg to play with he noticed a bit of seaweed hanging out of the bin and he started barking at that. Becky threw off the Mary Poppins costume and ran to Albert on the beach. He was a bit dazed after his fall, and embarrassed too, but the sight of Becky in her bikini was some consolation.

The moose’s head over the fireplace looks very intelligent in his Sherlock Holmes hat. The wife got it for him, and she’s started calling me Watson too. I knocked over a vase the other day, and I was going to blame it on the dog, but then I noticed the moose’s head in the hat looking down on me. I got the impression that he’d be able to identify the real culprit if I blamed the dog, so I admitted to it. I’m beginning to wonder if this is why she got the hat.

The Vase

The grass is growing quickly again, but it still feels as if summer hasn’t quite started yet. A few weeks ago I was predicting that we’d be looking into winter around about now, so maybe summer has come and gone. It wouldn’t be the first time.

My uncle Ben has a reputation for being the clever one in the family, and people are always asking him questions. My cousin Hector was visiting one day with his twin daughters, Alice and Grace. The twins asked Ben why the sun rises and falls. He picked up a vase and said, “Let’s say this vase is the sun and my head is the earth.” He looked at the vase for a while and said, “No, I’ve lost it now… Let’s say the globe is the earth and my head… No, let’s leave my head out of it. I’ll need that.” He thought about it for a minute and said, “Give me some more time to figure this one out.” The girls went back to working on a Lego model of a bunch of flowers they’d brought with them and Ben went for a walk in the garden to think about the problem. The Lego flowers were just starting to take shape when Grace decided to put them into a vase on the mantelpiece, but they were too heavy and the vase fell over. Alice caught it before it hit the ground. The remaining pieces of Lego were on the table. Alice was holding the flowers in her right hand, and her left hand was under the vase. She used her left hand to pick up another piece of Lego from the table, and she only remembered that this hand was supporting the vase when the vase broke on the ground. When Ben figured out how to explain the earth and the sun, he went back inside. He saw the broken vase and asked what happened, and Alice said, “Let’s say I’m me and… and the vase is your head, so… and let’s say the globe is the sun.” Alice smiled then and Ben said, “Oh right. I see.” He left them again in case they realised that he didn’t understand what they were talking about. The girls left the room too. Ben went back outside, but a few minutes later, his wife, my aunt Greta, came out and asked him what happened to the vase. He said, “Let’s says I’m… I’m me, and my head is… the globe, and the vase is…” “You broke it, didn’t you?” “No no no. At least I’m fairly sure I didn’t.” Greta said, “That’s exactly the same explanation you used when you broke the lampshade,” and Ben said, “Maybe I did break it.” He tried to figure out how he broke it, but it was a bit of a mystery to him. The girls had nearly completed their model of the flowers, but they were missing one piece. Grace said to Alice, “That piece must have fallen off when you dropped the flowers in the living room.” Alice said, “But I dropped…” She was going to say that she dropped the vase, but she didn’t want to admit to that, and when she thought about it then she wondered if she’d dropped the vase at all. They went back to the living room and looked all around the floor, but they couldn’t find the missing piece. Grace noticed the cat outside the window and she said, “Maybe the cat took it. She was in here at the time.” So they went outside to look for the piece in the garden. Just before this, my cousin Mike arrived with his wife, Louise, and his son, Scott. They were on their way to a school play that Scott was acting in. He was playing a rabbit, and his parents wanted Ben and Greta to see him in his rabbit costume. Scott wasn’t too keen on anyone seeing him in his rabbit costume, and when he found out that Alice and Grace were there he refused to get out of the car because he knew they’d make fun of him. His parents went inside, but a few minutes later Alice and Grace appeared around the front of the house. They were looking at the ground, and they didn’t seem to notice the car at first. When they did, they walked towards it, and Scott tried to hide his face. The girls had noticed a rectangle of dust on one of the windows and it was shaped just like the piece of Lego they were looking for. They stared at that. Scott remained completely still in the car. At first he thought they were looking at him, but then he realised that they didn’t seem to notice him at all. They walked away and started looking at the ground again. When they went around the back of the house, Scott finally got out of the car. His father was talking to Hector in the back garden. They were looking at the cat walking towards a tree, very slowly, taking careful steps, and Mike said, “Didn’t that cat play in midfield for Inter Milan?” The cat stopped and looked towards them. Hector looked at Mike and said, “It’s a cat.” “Oh yeah,” Mike said, “I just thought… Never mind.” The idea of a cat playing for Inter Milan sounded stupid then, but Mike knew he had something in mind when he said it. He just couldn’t remember what it was. Louise was talking to Ben in the kitchen. Aunt Greta came into the kitchen holding a flowerpot and she said, “Has anyone seen my glasses?” They said they hadn’t seen them, and Louise asked what type of flower was in the flowerpot. Greta looked down and got a shock when she saw what she was holding. “How did that get there?” she said. She gave the flowerpot to Ben and went outside to look for her glasses. Scott was in the back garden playing football with the cat. Normally the cat would run after the ball (it never did anything with the ball - it just ran), but on this day the cat kept staring at Scott in his rabbit costume. It took no notice of the ball every time Scott kicked it away. Mike saw this and said to Hector, “Y’ see, that’s why I thought… never mind.” He thought about suggesting that this was an example of Inter Milan’s ‘catenaccio’ counter-attacking strategy, but he decided against it. Then he realised that there was ‘cat’ in ‘catenaccio’ and he wished he had said it, but it was too late then. Greta thought her glasses might be on a red brick wall in the garden because she thought the flowerpot used to be there. She got Scott to stand on a step ladder to look for them. As soon as he got to the top of the ladder, Alice and Grace appeared in the back garden, and on top of a ladder in a rabbit costume was the last place he wanted to be with them around. But they were looking for something on the ground. They walked all around the step ladder and never looked up once. He remained completely still and silent and they didn’t notice him. When they were far enough away, he came down from the ladder and went back to playing football with the cat. Alice and Grace went around to the front of the house, but they still couldn’t find the missing piece. When they went around to the back again, Ben was there. The football fell out of the tree and bounced on the grass towards him. He went to catch it, and he only remembered that he was holding the flowerpot when it broke on the ground. “That’s how I broke the vase,” he said. “I didn’t even know I was holding it.” Greta looked at him, and Alice and Grace looked down at the ground, but everyone’s attention was diverted towards the cat shortly afterwards. The cat followed the football out of the tree and Mike said to Hector, “See!” Alice and Grace ran away when the giant rabbit climbed down from the tree.

The moose’s head over the fireplace seems to enjoy listening to Bach, or at least Bach holds his attention. The wife’s niece has started gliding by the window on roller skates to confuse the moose. She’ll glide by, stop and crawl back under the window, then glide by again. We just put on some Bach for the moose and he takes no notice of her, and she can go on like that for hours. It’s really a way of keeping her occupied rather than the moose’s head.

Hats

There’s an old stone wall in the garden that doesn’t really do anything apart from look like an old stone wall, but people are always admiring it. No one ever admires the garden gnome with the javelin and he’s doing a lot more than the stone wall.

My cousin Ronan went on a holiday with some friends of his, and they spent most of the time drinking or recovering from the drinking so they could drink some more. When he came back he looked through the photos they took and he noticed one of the whole group with a cheetah, and the cheetah was wearing a policeman’s hat. That came as a bit of a shock to Ronan. He could remember the cheetah, but he couldn’t remember anything about the policeman’s hat, and he wondered how it could have got there. His friends couldn’t explain it either. The next time they met up they were drinking in a pub in the middle of nowhere. The countryside around the pub was just fields and limestone rocks, with just a few trees. They were staying in a house about a mile away, and at two o’ clock in the morning they walked towards the house down a narrow road. They passed a pay phone, and Ronan noticed that the receiver was hanging down. He went inside and picked it up, and he heard a dog barking at the other end of the line. On the following day, Ronan couldn’t remember who came up with the idea to put a sheep into the phone booth, but that’s what they did. There were hundreds of sheep in the fields around them, so they put one of them in and said, “It’s for you.” They took a photo and then they put the sheep back in the field, but when they looked at the photo on the following day, the sheep was wearing a hat, and none of them remembered seeing the hat on the night before. No one said a word about it just in case they were imagining it. When Uncle Harry and Aunt Bridget were having a party at their house, my cousin Rachel asked her boyfriend, Robert, to go with her. He agreed to go, but he wasn’t looking forward to it, because Rachel’s nephew, Graham, once threw a paintbrush at him. Graham was really throwing the paintbrush at the top hat on Robert’s head, and he had no interest in throwing anything at a top-hat-less Robert. But Robert was still worried that Graham would throw something at him. Graham’s mother, my cousin June, bought a tiny top hat for her pet duck, Sleepy. She took Sleepy to Harry and Bridget’s party and put the top hat on his head, and then she told Robert that he had nothing to fear from Graham because he’d be distracted by the duck in the top hat. Ronan was more distracted by Sleepy than anyone. He spent a long time staring at the tiny top hat, but then another sight distracted him from Sleepy. My cousin Chloe invited a friend called Emily to the party, and when Ronan saw her he completely forgot about the duck in the hat. She was in the orchard when he met her, and she said she was just admiring the apples. He picked an apple from a tree, and then he took out his Swiss army knife and cut the apple in half. He offered her a piece, but he noticed she was looking at the knife. “I found it in a swimming pool,” he said, and she declined the offer of the apple. He managed to stay by her side for most of the evening. She hardly said a word but he spent the time drinking and talking. Drinking always helps him talk, but it doesn’t help him listen to what other people are saying, or not saying. He didn’t notice her silence at all. Around midnight they were walking through the back garden, and he was pointing out the stars in the sky. The drink also made him think that one of the constellations was called Rain Man. As they were walking down some steps, he was pointing at a constellation above when he heard an odd sound on the ground. He looked down and saw that his foot was in a bucket. He pointed at the bucket and said, “And that’s me standing in a bucket.” Only he found that funny. He had trouble getting the bucket off his foot - that’s another thing the drink didn’t help him with, and it didn’t aid his balance either. He fell into a fish pond and Emily finally saw her chance to get away. She said, “I’ll just go and get someone to help you,” and she walked very quickly back towards the house. She did send someone out to help. She met my cousin Jane at the back door, and when Jane heard that Ronan was in the pond with a bucket stuck to his foot she went to get her camera. Ronan had once taken a photo of her when a donkey was chasing her around a field. He was out of the pond when Jane got there, but the bucket was still stuck to his foot, and he was covered in mud and water lilies. Just as she was about to take the photo he said, “Wait a minute. What are you doing?” “I was just going to take your photo.” “I don’t know about this.” “Why not? It’s just a photo.” Ronan thought about it for a while and said, “It just doesn’t seem like the right time.” Sleepy walked by with the top hat, and he stopped when he saw Ronan, who said to Jane, “Now you can take my photo.” He smiled for the camera, but Sleepy just fell asleep.

The moose’s head over the fireplace is still recovering from the excitement of last week’s Champions League final, when Liverpool won on penalties. “If you wrote a little essay about it, no one would believe it.” Those were the words of John Giles on Irish TV after the match. The moose’s head looked devastated at half-time when Liverpool were three-nil down. So was I, but the wife didn’t really care. It was raining too. Who would have believed a comeback like that was possible? Who would have believed that instead of kicking the ball into an empty net, Andriy Shevchenko would choose to hit the Polish man sitting on the ground. Needless to say, the hen in the painting looked surprised.