The Owl and the Puppy

The trees are starting to look brown. The fish in the fish pond still keep the dog entertained for hours. He used to enjoy looking at the washing machine just as much, but I suppose he's outgrown it now.

When my cousin Ronan was going to college, he couldn't afford a car of his own, but his girlfriend, Audrey, had a small car, and she used to drive him around the place. He hated it because it was a tiny car, his girlfriend was driving it, and to make things even worse, she had little stuffed animals 'asleep' on the back seat (she used to say that they were sleeping).

He always found fault with her driving from the passenger's seat. One day, after going around and around on a roundabout, they finally made it back to his place. When they came to a stop, she turned back and said to the animals, "Did ye enjoy that?"

There was silence from the animals. Ronan reached back and picked up a koala. He said in the voice of the koala (his best Australian accent), "You changed lanes at a continuous white line."

"She doesn't talk like that," Audrey said.

That evening they went to see a magician who was famous for performing with an owl. He'd get the owl to draw pictures and he'd interpret the pictures himself. When Ronan and Audrey were there, the owl drew a few indecipherable lines, and the magician said, "He's drawn a tarantula on Sesame Street eating Big Bird's legs. Again." A dog had recently joined the act, and he drew Steve McQueen killing the tarantula.

Ronan saw a way for the toy animals to express their thoughts in the drawings. On the way home, he drew a picture of a car on a road, and when they stopped he said, "The panda drew this. I think he's trying to say that you were in the wrong lane coming up to the roundabout."

Audrey didn't say anything, but when they met on the following day she showed him a drawing that looked vaguely like a house. She said, "The squirrel drew this. He's not much of an artist, but I think what he was trying to express was that he doesn't like the way you laughed at that woman with the hat."

More drawings followed. Ronan did one illustrating the dog's displeasure at its owners slow speed on dual carriage ways, and Audrey responded with one supposedly from the koala that made fun of Ronan's ability to open tins.

Audrey's sister, Carol, had been asked to pose for a portrait of her eyes. She had been reluctant at first because she was hoping the artist would be interested in painting more of her than just her eyes, but she agreed to do it, and she was delighted when she first saw the finished painting. Then she looked closer at it, and in her eyes she saw the faint reflection of a dog with a box of chocolates in his mouth.

"Are you trying to imply that I'm looking at a dog with a box of chocolates in his mouth?" she said to the artist.

"Yes." He nodded.

"But I've never seen a dog with a box of chocolates in his mouth."

"You have now."

"Yeah, but... It's not really a representation of my eyes because I'd never see things like that."

"That's the sort of thing that people see all the time, but they just don't notice these things. If you look at everything in a literal way, then everything is just going to be walls and trees and things, but if you're willing to look at the underlying poetry of things, then you'll see dogs with a boxes of chocolates in their mouths."

Carol wasn't entirely sure what that meant. It started to make a little bit more sense when she went to see the magician with the owl and the puppy. She couldn't make out Big Bird or Steve McQueen in the drawings, so she assumed that they must be there in the underlying poetry.

Someone from the audience said to the magician that he was just making up these interpretations, and that the owl and the puppy didn't know what they were drawing. Carol was sitting in the front row, and the magician called her onto the stage. He showed her a drawing that was just a few lines and a red dot, and he said to her, "Tell me what you see in this drawing. Do you see a puppy? Look at the little puppy."

Carol looked at it and said, "I see a dog."

"Yes, that'll do," the magician said. "And what's the dog doing?"

"He's... holding a box of chocolates in his mouth."

"Very good. And what about this one?"

"I see a dog giving a box of chocolates to another dog."

"Excellent."

He showed her a few more drawings, and in each one she saw a dog doing something, mostly with a box of chocolates.

After Audrey had done a drawing on behalf of the dog in which Ronan's hair was compared to a hedgehog, Ronan did a drawing of Audrey falling over outside a church at a friend's wedding. The panda was in the background, pointing and laughing at her. Ronan showed it to her and said, "The panda has just done this, and I think it's one of his best, from an artistic point of view anyway, but..." He noticed a tear in Audrey's eye, and he thought he might have gone too far this time, so he said, "As you can see, he's drawn a picture of you falling over at the wedding, and he's drawn himself in the background, crying because he's sad. Obviously he can't actually cry himself, so he's drawn this picture to show that he's really, really sad about what happened to you."

"It looks to me as if he's laughing," Audrey said.

"No, no. He's definitely not laughing. Look at how sad he is."

"He looks happy to me."

"No, no. He's definitely not happy."

When they got back to Audrey's place, she showed the drawing to her sister and said, "What do you see in this?"

"I see a dog running away with someone's pogo stick," Carol said with absolute confidence.

Ronan looked at it again and said, "Yeah, that's what he's trying to depict."

"Is that really true?" Audrey said to the panda.

Ronan got the panda to nod.

"What were you thinking?" Audrey said, again to the panda.

Ronan tried to get the panda to shrug its shoulders, which seemed like the only appropriate response.

The moose's head over the fireplace has looked slightly surprised recently, ever since the wife's uncle called around and he told a story about buying a pair of suede shoes. He said he left them in the hall when he went to renew his gun licence, and when he came back they were at the top of the stairs. Ever since he tied them to the table they've remained in the same place. The surprised-looking hen in the painting didn't look quite as surprised as I thought it would.

A Goat in a Wig

It's after getting cold over the past week. One of the garden gnomes keeps falling over. I don't know if this has anything to do with the cold or the chimney brush he's trying to hold.

My cousin June once inadvertently agreed to direct a variety show for charity. She thought she was being asked if she knew what a variety show was, so when she said 'yes', she thought she was saying, "Yes, I do know what a variety show is." She had never done anything like this before, and she'd never have agreed to it if she knew what she was agreeing to. She asked everyone she knew if they'd take part in it, but they all understood what she was asking them, and almost all of them said no. Her sister, Rachel, agreed to play the violin. A friend of a friend was a ventriloquist, and he agreed to do his act in the show.

She came across another act in the supermarket when she was doing the shopping. A string quartet were playing there, and they were wearing paper hats. A classical music festival was on at the time, and they were asked to play in the supermarket to promote it. The viola player, John, said, "We'd love to play in a supermarket," in his most sarcastic voice.

The others were getting sick of his sarcasm. Sheila, the cellist, said, "Yeah, we would."

When John saw the supermarket he wondered how this could get any more demeaning. He said, "Why don't we just wear paper hats as well?"

The others all agreed to this.

When they finished playing a piece, June went over to them and said, "I'm putting on a show for charity, and I was wondering if ye'd be interested in taking part."

"Oh we'd love to," John said.

"Yeah, we would," Sheila said.

"That's great. Of course, it is for charity, so..."

"Oh we wouldn't dream of taking any money for it."

"Yeah, we wouldn't."

Rachel wasn't too happy when she heard about the string quartet. She wasn't a bad violinist, but she'd surely be upstaged by a professional string quartet. She was very nervous as she rehearsed on the stage on the night before the show, and she was distracted by a man telling a story of how he got through customs with just a wig and a marble statue of a goat in his suitcase.

On the day of the show, the ventriloquist was rehearsing as people were working on the set around him. They were setting up a piece of scenery that moved to the side, to give the impression that the cyclists on the stage were moving. The ventriloquist turned around and said, "Is that piece of scenery moving when I'm facing the other way."

"Yeah."

"Well why do ye stop it every time I turn around to see it?"

"We don't. It's moving now."

The ventriloquist stared at it. The dummy was facing the other way, with a permanent smile on his face. It was the dummy who said, "Oh God! It's happening again."

He ran from the theatre, and was last seen running away through the fields.

June was with the string quartet when she was told about what happened. She said to them, "Would ye mind helping us look for him in the fields?"

"Oh we'd love to."

"Yeah, we would."

So they all went off into the fields, looking for the ventriloquist and his dummy. June had arranged a replacement act, just in case they couldn't find him. Rachel was back in the hall, looking at this act on the stage. It was the man who had been telling the story of the goat and the wig on the previous night. He was standing on the stage, holding the marble statue of the goat, and the goat was wearing the wig. It seemed to be a sort of a ventriloquism act too, with the man pretending to do the voice of the goat. He was just making it up as he went along. He'd ask the goat if he had done anything interesting yesterday, and the goat would say, "I went to the shop, and, ah... then I went to another shop and I met Bridie. And Bridie was telling me that she bought a torpedo from a man with an apple tree. I don't know what shop she got that in. Or maybe she bought it at an apple tree. I forgot to ask her about that because... because she had an apple on her head. That probably came from the apple tree too, when she was buying the torpedo. I forgot to ask her about that because... she was being followed by a rabbit."

Rachel looked on in horror. She'd never be able to concentrate on her act after this, especially after having to listen to the string quartet as well. She wondered how she could get rid of this man, and she thought it would be ideal if he got lost in the fields. So she suggested to him that they help in the search for the ventriloquist. And she told him to bring the statue of the goat with the wig as well, so he could practise his act on the way. She was hoping that a real goat would see the statue and attack the man. It was a bit of a long shot, she knew, but it was worth a try anyway.

June and the string quartet had found the ventriloquist near a pond, but he was refusing to come back to the show. When Rachel and the man with the goat arrived, June said to the ventriloquist, "This is great. Now you can see the act we've replaced you with."

The man with the goat did a bit of his act, and the ventriloquist said, "That was the biggest load of rubbish I've ever seen in my life."

"Me too," the dummy said.

The man with the goat said, "If it's good enough to convince a customs official with a stun gun, it'll work on an audience at a variety show."

Rachel saw the possibility of taking out the man with the goat in a fight with the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist would surely win because he wouldn't be lumbered with a marble statue of a goat, and the dummy looked much more mobile than the goat. She whispered to the ventriloquist, "He was just saying earlier that your act is the sort of thing he was doing when he was four."

The ventriloquist said, "I've seen stones that are more believable as a goat."

And the dummy said, "He's just a stone with a wig."

The 'goat' said, "Well you're just a piece of wood in a suit."

"Do you want to say that to my face?" the dummy said.

"What, the piece of wood under the wig?"

The dummy and the goat moved towards each other, but before they could fight, they saw a real goat running towards them. As the goat got closer, it became clear that he was running towards the man with the statue. He ran away, and the goat kept running after him. Rachel smiled.

June said to the ventriloquist, "Will you come back to replace him? You'd be doing me a huge favour."

"I don't know," he said. "The people who are there to see the string quartet will just look down on me."

"Not at all. You'd be the artistic highlight of the show." She turned to the string quartet and said, "Isn't that right."

"We'd be like Phil Collins compared to you," John said.

"Yeah, we would."

"They're right," the dummy said to the ventriloquist.

"Okay so," the ventriloquist said. "I'll come back."

As they walked back towards the theatre, Rachel wondered how she'd get rid of the string quartet. She looked around, but she couldn't see any more goats, and even if there were more goats, there was no guarantee that they'd attack the string quartet. But then she came up with another idea. She said to them, "Can I play with ye?"

"Oh that'd be just fantastic."

"Yeah, it would."

So she stood on the stage with the string quartet and pretended to play along. They got a huge round of applause at the end.

The moose's head over the fireplace looks in pain every time I play the violin. I'm sure he's just pretending. The sound can't be as painful as the process that took him from a healthy moose to a head on the wall. I hadn't played it in a few years until recently, and the moose's head clearly doesn't think much of my musical ability. Neither do I, but I don't like the idea of a moose's head expressing this opinion. So I've been practising a lot, mostly just to annoy him.

Churchill in a Quarry

Another evening in the garden, looking at things in the wind, like the trees moving from side to side, or the clouds going by above. Asking the dog if he knows where the watering can is, but that blows by on the wind too.

My Uncle Cyril once saved a drowning dog from a lake. The dog never liked the way the swans were looking at him, and when his owner threw a stick in front of him, he seemed to think that the stick was thrown at him. He immediately blamed the swans for this. He jumped into the water, and it came as a bit of a surprise to him and to his owner that he couldn't swim. That's when Cyril walked into the water and pulled him out.

The dog's owner was an artist, and she painted a picture of Cyril holding the dog in his arms, with the lake in the background. He hung the painting on the wall in his dining room. He had told very few people about saving the dog, but he was hoping that someone would ask about the painting so he could tell the story.

When my cousin Jane called around with her friend, Claudia, she looked at the wall and said, "Is there something different about that wall?"

"As a matter of fact, there is," Cyril said.

"Yeah, I thought you'd painted it. It's a sort of a cream colour, isn't it?"

"That's not cream," Claudia said. "It's a shade of green."

"Green? There's no way that's green. It's definitely cream."

They spent the next ten minutes arguing about the colour, and neither of them noticed the painting. When Jane got home she told her mother about how Cyril had painted his dining room a cream colour, and how it was very definitely a shade of cream, not green, and only stupid people would think it's green. Most of the relatives heard about Cyril's cream wall, although some of them saw a shade of green when they saw it. He was sick of people talking about the colour of the paint and not the painting, so he painted the whole room white.

The next time Jane and Claudia came around, Jane said, "It's looking more cream than ever now."

"It's green," Claudia said.

"I don't know what you're looking at. You must be looking at something green. You can't be looking at the wall anyway, because that's definitely not green."

"It's white!" Cyril said. "It's obviously white."

"There's no way that's white," Jane said.

"Yeah," Claudia said. "It's a very light green."

"It's cream."

Cyril installed lights on the ceiling to illuminate the painting, but the next time Jane saw it she said, "The lights aren't going to make the wall look any more white."

My cousin Ted and his wife, Anne, had been putting up wallpaper all over their house at about this time. Anne's uncle worked in a wallpaper factory, and when he retired he got some top quality wallpaper. Jane and Claudia went to look at this too. Anne showed them the wallpaper in the hall and said, "What do ye see in the pattern?"

They stared at the pattern for about a minute before Anne said, "It's Winston Churchill sitting in a quarry."

Jane said, "I can't make out either Winston Churchill or a quarry."

"That's because it's Winston Churchill in a quarry, not either one or the other."

They looked again. "Oh yeah," Jane said. "I can see it now."

Cyril's wife, Aunt Joyce, was telling Jane's mother about the painting of Cyril on the wall, and when she told Jane and Claudia about it, they both thought it was something in the wall, like the pattern in the wallpaper. "That's why he got those lights to illuminate the wall," Jane said.

They went back to Cyril's house, and when Jane saw the wall this time she said, "Is that a portrait of you?"

"It is," Cyril said. "With a dog."

"Oh yeah. I think I can see the dog alright."

"He's in my arms."

"Oh right. I'd never have recognised either you or the dog, but I can see you with the dog."

"So that's what it is," Cyril said. "I was wondering why no one noticed me before."

"That's what it is. And is there a car in there as well?"

"No."

"Sorry, that's just me."

Claudia looked closely at the wall and said, "Jane, can you see Santa on a water slide?"

"Oh yeah," Jane said. "I think I can."

"Do you?" Claudia said. "Because I can't see that at all."

"It's behind Uncle Cyril with the dog."

"I can't see that at all."

"Uncle Cyril, isn't that Santa on a water slide behind you with the dog?"

There was something in the background of the painting that he couldn't make out. "Possibly," he said.

"That's what it is alright."

He wondered what this could mean. He hadn't taken much notice of the background before, but when he looked closely he saw something that looked just like a kettle drum. He remembered the time he had a conversation with a kettle drum after drinking too much at a party. He didn't actually remember the incident himself, but he remembered everyone reminding him of it, and laughing at him. He had no idea what Santa on a water slide could mean, but the kettle drum would remind everyone of that conversation.

He thought about taking the painting down, just in case someone else noticed the kettle drum. But then they might wonder why he took it down, and think he was trying to hide something.

Jane and Claudia called back to see the wall a few days later. During those few days, they'd been arguing about the presence of Santa on a water slide on the wall. The argument continued in Cyril's dining room. He let them argue, and he hoped they wouldn't notice the kettle drum.

For a while he thought that Jane had spotted it when she said, "I've been meaning to ask you this for ages. Who's the man with all the sheep?" She pointed at the painting of Cyril with the dog (the artist tried to make the swans look menacing, and they did look a bit like sheep), but he thought she must be talking about something in the wall, like with Ted and Anne's wallpaper. He'd seen that too, and he thought he saw a lampshade in the pattern, but Anne insisted it was Churchill in a quarry.

He looked closely at the wall and said, "Is it Churchill?"

"It doesn't really look like Churchill. Unless he's in a quarry or a caravan or something."

"What about... Eisenhower?"

"That's who it is." Jane had no idea what Eisenhower looked like.

All of the relatives heard the news that Cyril had a portrait of Eisenhower in his dining room, and he was quite happy with this because at least they couldn't spot the link between him and the kettle drum. A few people noticed the kettle drum in the background, but no one said anything about it because they could see no connection between Eisenhower and a kettle drum.

The moose's head over the fireplace seems to be laughing at me every time I come into the room. I was looking for a coin on the carpet the other day and every time I looked up at him, he was smiling. He obviously knew where the coin was, and it was obviously in a very obvious place, so I stopped looking rather than look stupid. I tried dropping a pen on the ground just to get a chance to look for the coin, but I think he saw through that.

Steve’s Pass

I walked all around the garden, by the old red brick wall, and then the fence at the very back of the garden. The fields are full of cattle. Fields normally don’t get any more exciting than that, but then gardens don’t do very much either.

My cousin June went into her back garden one evening and she noticed something odd in the field behind it. There was a donkey running through the grass, and he was pulling a red kite behind him. Her kids, Daisy and Graham, stood near the fence and watched him run back and forth. June said to Graham, “Isn’t that your kite?”

“It is.”

“How did the donkey get it?”

“I don’t know. He must have just… I don’t know.”

A few weeks before this, June’s husband, Dan, had been watching an international soccer friendly on TV with some of his friends, and they were all bored out of their minds. Dan suggested watching the kids’ pet rabbits instead, just to see if they were more interesting, and they were. His friends often came over in the evenings to watch the rabbits on the grass. On this evening, June’s sister, my cousin Rachel, arrived with Uncle Harry, and he brought a bottle of brandy that he’d found in a shoe box in the attic. He joined Dan and his friends watching the rabbits, and the brandy made them even more entertaining. Rachel joined them for a few minutes too, but she didn’t really understand rabbits, and she kept asking questions like ‘which way are they playing again?’. Then one of Dan’s friends asked her if she’d seen his shoes. “I’m afraid I’ve lost them,” he said.

“How did you lose your shoes?”

“If I knew how I lost them, they wouldn’t be lost.”

Rachel thought there was something wrong with that statement, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. She left them and went over to June, who was able to get a much closer look at the donkey now. She said to the kids, “How did the donkey get into the garden?”

“I don’t know,” Daisy said. “The same way he got the kite, I suppose.”

“I fell off a donkey once,” Rachel said.

“How did you do that?”

“If I knew how I fell off a donkey, I… I just fell off a donkey.”

She tried to avoid the donkey after that, but the kids found him very entertaining. He was more exciting than the rabbits anyway. They sat on the swings as they watched him. They were eating marshmallows, and they gave names to the marshmallows as they ate them.

The donkey seemed to become part of the rabbits’ game. He stood on the grass and stared at the rabbits, and they stared back at him, which was more exciting than the rabbits on their own, which was much more exciting than most international soccer friendlies. But the game really came to life when Rachel walked onto the pitch. She wanted to get past the donkey so she could go inside, and the rabbits liked Rachel, so they followed her. The donkey wanted to avoid Rachel too, but they kept getting in each other’s way. The kids were still calling out the names, and it sounded like soccer commentary. And then Dan noticed something familiar in the pattern of play. He said, “This looks just like the build-up to Carlos Alberto’s goal in the 1970 World Cup.”

The donkey was the defence, and the rabbits were the Brazilian team. Rachel was the ball. Daisy and Graham were calling out names like ‘Deirdre’ or ‘Window’, but it still seemed just like Carlos Alberto’s goal. Daisy called out the name ‘Polly’, and they all thought that sounded like ‘Pele’, even though he wasn’t supposed to get the ball for another few passes. When ‘Pele’ (or ‘Steve’, as Graham christened him) finally got the ball on the edge of the area (Rachel was looking at the donkey, with one of the rabbits at her heels) he kept it at his feet for a while, then played the perfect pass to Carlos Alberto, who was coming up behind him (Rachel took a step to her right, and the other rabbit ran towards her), then Carlos Alberto shot towards the bottom corner of the goals (Rachel ran past the donkey). The donkey didn’t move as Rachel flew past him, but she went the wrong side of the goal post (a flowerpot). All of the spectators cheered anyway because Steve’s pass was so perfect. When they looked up, the donkey had a pair of shoes in his mouth. “Give me those,” Dan’s friend said as he took his shoes back.

The moose’s head over the fireplace is getting ready for the big match tonight (Ireland are playing France in a crucial World Cup qualifier). He’s wearing his green scarf. All of the experts are saying that it won’t be a good game, but it should be very exciting anyway. The hen in the painting will have every right to look surprised if we get anything as good as Carlos Alberto’s goal, but you never know with Zidane or Duff on the pitch.