'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

The Haunted House


There's a small plastic ship in the fish pond. I think the wife's niece put it there. I don't know what the fish think of it, or if they think anything. If they knew the wife's niece, they'd be glad that the only contact they have with her is through a small plastic ship.


My Aunt Bridget inherited a house from an uncle of hers. The house was an old mansion in the country, but her uncle always said it was haunted. Some people believed that the ghost was just a bat, but others said the bat was dead.


Bridget's daugter, Rachel, said that only stupid people believed in ghosts, and she offered to spend a weekend in the house just to prove that it wasn't haunted.


"That would really put my mind at rest," Bridget said.


Rachel wasn't expecting her mother to allow her to spend a weekend in a haunted house, but she couldn't get out of it then, so she suggested that her brothers, Ronan and Alan, stay there too.


Ronan was spending that week on a camping trip with his friends. They met up with another group on a mountainside, but Ronan didn't get on very well with one member of that group, Nigel. Nigel used to say that the only positive thing about camping was that he'd get to kill things with his bare hands. About once an hour he'd say to Ronan, "Have you killed anything with your bare hands yet, or are you still crying over the bee that landed on your hand?"


There was a post box outside a small shop at the foot of the mountain, and Ronan used to send letters to his girlfriend, Audrey, every day during their camping trip (she said she'd throw something at his head if he didn't write to her every day). She got the final letter on the day he was supposed to return. The handwriting was almost illegible, and she suspected that he was drunk when he wrote it, but she still wasn't expecting the following line near the end: Hey Nigel, go back to the tree you came from.


She showed it to him when he got back, and he stared at the words in horror. She said, "Are you worried that you told Nigel to go back to the tree he came from?"


"No. I'm worried that I wrote what I was going to say to him and said to him what I was going to write to you."


"What were you going to write to me?"


"I can't remember."


"Would it have been like that bit where you said I was like a rose in a garden full of rabbits?"


"Yeah."


Rachel asked Ronan if he'd spend the weekend in the haunted house, but he refused. Then his mother told him that a man had called to the door earlier looking for him.


"Who was it?" Ronan said.


"He didn't say who he was."


"What did he look like?"


"He was very tall. And I thought for a second there was dried blood on his hands, but it was probably just mud."


Ronan thought this must have been Nigel, and he changed his mind about spending the weekend in the haunted house. Audrey agreed to go too. Alan brought his new girlfriend, Sonia. Rachel also convinced my cousins Gary and Jane to go, and Jane's friend Claudia.


The house was huge, and it looked great in the daylight, but they all became nervous when it started to get dark. It got very dark when the storm clouds moved overhead. The electricity went in the storm, but they all pretended that it didn't bother them at all.


Jane was having trouble keeping up that pretence in front of the others, so she decided to go to bed. She had locked her room, and she thought she had put the key in her pocket, but she couldn't find it. She lit a candle with a cigarette lighter she always carried with her. There was an image of a cowboy on the side of the lighter, and when she looked at it in the light of the candle, she noticed that the cowboy seemed to be trying to hide a key.


Alan and Sonia stayed in the drawing room, but the others helped her in the search for the key. Gary was keeping a look-out for a drinks cabinet or a wine cellar.


Jane led the search party down a corridor, but they stopped when they heard footsteps at the end of the corridor. Ronan wondered if Nigel had tracked him down to this house. When he heard the faint sound of a voice he said, "It's him!"


"The ghost?" Jane said.


"Ah... yeah. The ghost."


They all took a step backwards.


They went upstairs. Jane looked down at the ground every few steps, hoping to find her key, but she was too worried about what might lie ahead to keep looking down. They walked very slowly down the corridor and stopped at the end. There was complete silence for nearly a minute as they stood there, listening for any sounds. Then a voice behind them said hello and they all screamed, but it was just Gary.


He had left the group for a while, but no one noticed his absence. Judging by the look on his face, he had found the wine cellar. He had a calculator in his hand and he said, "I can spell the word 'rabbit' on a calculator. Look."


He held out the calculator. Jane looked at it and said, "You've just written the word 'rabbit' on it with a marker."


"I know."


"Wouldn't it be more impressive if you could write 'rabbit' using the digits on the calculator?"


"It would."


"Why did you want to spell the word 'rabbit' on a calculator?"


"Because someone bet me I couldn't do it."


"Who?"


Gary tried to think, but he couldn't remember much after going into the wine cellar. "I can't remember," he said. Ronan was convinced it was Nigel.


"Was he wearing a cowboy hat?" Jane said.


Gary tried to think, but in his mind all he could see were badgers with crash helmets running in circles. "Yeah," he said.


Ronan wondered why Nigel would be wearing a cowboy hat. As they were walking down the stairs, Audrey said to him, "Do you remember that letter you wrote about you being a cowboy and me being your cowgirl?"


"Yeah."


"Do you think you called Nigel a cowgirl?"


He thought about it for a while and said, "Oh God!"


After looking for the key on the ground floor, Rachel suggested looking in the attic rooms.


"Why the attic rooms?" Jane said.


"You're not afraid, are you?"


"No, of course not. Let's go."


Rachel was afraid, and she had been hoping that Jane would say there was no point in searching the attic rooms because she'd never been up there.


They went upstairs again and walked down a corridor that led to the spiral stairs up to the attic. They all stopped suddenly when they heard a sound from a room, but the moment of panic passed when they realised it was just Alan and Sonia. The search party stood outside the door and tried to hold back laughter as Alan and Sonia discussed who was the better kisser.


There was silence for about a minute when that conversation came to an end. Alan had never realised it would be this difficult to keep themselves entertained without electricity. He had been doing his best with his Doctor Who impersonation. He'd seen a man on TV do a Doctor Who impersonation by making cryptic statments to a candle stick. Very few people in the audience were familiar with Doctor Who, and no one understood the statements, but they all pretended that they did. They laughed at everything he said.


Alan remembered this when he was walking around the house with the candle stick, so he started doing that Doctor Who impersonation. Sonia had no idea who Doctor Who was either, but she laughed anyway.


He thought the joke would start to wear thin eventually, but he couldn't think of anything else to say, so he broke the silence with another Doctor Who impersonation. He picked up the candle stick and said, in his best Doctor Who voice, which was really just a very deep voice, "The thin bird makes rally cars forget they have a say in how the slow deer steal the white feathers, and a dead rabbit."


Ronan and Audrey had no idea what that meant, but they were sure it had something to do with the letters. They screamed and ran away. Jane, Claudia and Rachel ran away too, leaving just Gary. When Alan and Sonia came out to see what was going on, Gary held up the calculator and said, "You owe me twenty quid."


Alan and Sonia had met Gary in the wine cellar earlier, and Alan made this bet just to get rid of Gary. He looked at the calculator and said, "There are two 'B's in 'rabbit'."


Gary looked at it for a while, but the three of them ran away when they heard something flying over their heads.


The moose's head over the fireplace has looked confused over the past few days. I think it's because of a film on TV that was mostly about people looking for something on the carpet. It ended with someone saying, "I found it." 'It' turned out to be a bottle of gin with an image of someone falling over a fence on the label. I found this confusing too. The moose's head couldn't see the screen, and I think he'd be even more confused if he knew what they were looking for. The surprised looking hen in the painting didn't look confused at all.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Charge of the Light Brigade


A neighbour was admiring the garden the other day, and I was telling her about how my grandfather planted the orchard because he felt he needed somewhere to hide. It's becoming more difficult to hide amongst the trees these days, with the leaves beginning to fall.


My cousin Gary was in a shop one evening, and he saw a piece of paper on the notice board that said 'Rodeo, near the tree by the lake'. This was just a short walk away, so on his way home he went to the lake.


A small crowd had gathered to see the rodeo, but it was really just a man with a donkey, and the donkey didn't feel very well. The man with the 'This is a rodeo' sign said, "This is not a rodeo at all. We're, ah... we're recreating a scene from the Crimean War. There's Florence Nightingale, the lady with the shoes."


He pointed towards a woman in high heel shoes, and then he started talking about the historical background of the scene, but it sounded as if he was making most of it up as he went along. Gary started talking to the woman in the shoes. She was bored with the Crimean War recreation, and he asked her if she'd like to go to the pub just down the road. She said she'd love to, and they left the man with the donkey.


Gary bought her a drink, and they were getting on very well until he asked her how she knew the man with the donkey.


"He's my boyfriend," she said.


"You might have mentioned that before," Gary said.


"Yeah. He does get very jealous."


"You really could have told me that before."


"Yeah."


They went back to the tree, and there was a bigger crowd for the Crimean War recreation than for the rodeo. The donkey looked much happier. The man was using a brush to illuminate some historical detail, and when he saw Gary he said it was time to recreate The Charge of the Light Brigade. All it really amounted to was chasing Gary and hitting him with the brush.


Gary tried to object that this had no historical basis whatsoever, but no one took any notice. The chase lasted a few minutes before Gary got away. He went straight home, and he wished he'd never gone to the rodeo.


Gary's sister, my cousin Chloe, was on her way to meet a friend of hers when she met another friend, Vincent. He was part of a group of bell ringers, and they were getting ready for a performance on the following weekend. Vincent used to practise the bell ringing by throwing stones at things. That's what he was doing when Chloe met him. She applauded as he threw stones at a bin. He went with her to the park, but he was always looking for things to throw stones at on the way.


Chloe's friend, Emma, was standing in a fountain when they got there. She was eating chocolates and staring off into the distance. Chloe said to her, "Why are you standing in the fountain?"


"Hm?" Emma looked all around her. "I'm... I'm standing in a fountain."


Chloe remembered that Emma was going to a wine-tasting class with her aunt earlier that evening, and she was competing with her aunt to see who could taste the most wine. Chloe assumed that Emma must have won.


"Isn't it about time to come out of the fountain now?" Chloe said.


"Fountain?"


Chloe wondered how she'd get her friend back on dry land. Vincent said, "I could throw stones at her, if you like." But Chloe said that wouldn't be necessary.


She eventually said, "Emma, my mother has some wine that she wants to get rid of, if you'd like to try it."


"Yes," Emma said as she walked out of the fountain. "I was just thinking that some wine would be the perfect way to round off the evening."


They walked back towards the house, and Chloe was kept busy trying to keep Emma upright and to stop Vincent from throwing stones at things. He wanted to throw stones at a van and a road sign. He very nearly threw a stone at a garden gnome in someone's garden while Chloe was distracted by Emma's conversation with a lamp post.


They arrived at the house just as Gary arrived back from the war recreation. Chloe asked him if he knew of anything that Vincent could throw stones at, and he said, "Actually, I do. I know just the thing."


He took them to the Crimean War recreation near the lake. The crowd was still there, listening to the man talk about ammunition. He stopped when he saw the new arrivals.


Gary said to him, "I've come back to teach you a historical lesson. We're going to recreate The Charge of the Light Brigade again. Vincent will stand on a hill and you'll run by beneath him while he throws stones at you. Are you ready?"


"No."


"Why not?"


"It's stupid."


"Yes, it's very stupid, but that's what the Light Brigade did. You do want to be historically accurate, don't you?"


"No."


"If you don't take part, Vincent will throw stones at you anyway."


"You could do anything at all and I'll throw stones at you," Vincent said.


"Do you apologise for hitting me with the brush?" Gary said to the man who had hit him with the brush.


"Yes."


"And do you apologise for being so historically inaccurate?"


"Yes. I'm very sorry."


"That's okay so. I still can't guarantee that Vincent won't throw stones at you."


But then Vincent saw a jogger on the road, and he recognised the man. The piece of music they were due to perform was composed for piano, bells, and sore oboe. They didn't know what a sore oboe was, but then one of them met a trumpeter with a limp and that seemed close enough. It was closer than a perfectly healthy oboe player anyway.


So they allowed the trumpeter into the group and he continued to limp, but now he was jogging on the road, without any sign of a limp. Vincent shouted at him, "Hey, you're not injured at all."


The trumpeter saw Vincent with the stones, and he seemed to get the impression that his uninjured state wouldn't last long. His jog became a run and Vincent ran after him, leaving Gary completely undefended. The man with the brush took his opportunity to attack. He chased Gary around the field and hit him with the brush again. The crowd had no idea which side the jogger was on, but they enjoyed the recreation anyway. Emma thought she was still in the fountain.


The moose's head over the fireplace seemed to be listening very carefully to something. I thought I could hear music from somewhere. I asked the wife if that was the song about the man who was trying to say he had an eagle who fell off a bin, and his girlfriend thought he was proposing to her. She looked at me as if I was mad, or stupid. The moose's head over the fireplace seemed to be looking at me as if I was stupid too, so I don't know what he was listening to.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Storm Singers


I saw a mouse in the garden the other day. I told the dog to attack it, but that didn't work. I told the wife that the dog is afraid of mice, and I said it loud enough for the dog to hear, but that didn't work either.


My cousin Ted and his wife, Anne, agreed to look after some of their nieces and nephews for a day. It started out with just Daisy and Graham, because their parents were going to a wedding. And then Hector asked Ted if they'd look after Alice and Grace too. Ted and Anne agreed because they thought that if you could find something to keep two kids occupied, then it would work on four just as well. They agreed to take Scott because five was just one more than four.


They both looked badly shaken when they got home that evening, after taking all the kids home. They stood in their living room and just smiled with the relief of the silence. They heard the clock ticking, and the breeze outside.


Then Anne remembered that my cousin Craig was supposed to be on television. He had formed a vocal group called The Storm Singers, and they were appearing on a talent show. Ted and Anne wanted to appreciate the silence for as long as possible, but they knew they had to watch Craig and his group, so they turned on the TV. They kept the volume low.


But the nerves were affecting The Storm Singers. The show was being filmed in a garden, and they just stood there in complete silence. This came as a huge relief to Ted and Anne. The sound of the breeze on the TV was in perfect harmony with the breeze outside their window. They went to the kitchen and turned on the TV there, just to see the trees in their back garden moving with the trees on TV. It was like a sympony of breeze and branches, rising and falling in harmony.


My cousin Rachel called on the phone that evening. She had missed Craig's performance, and she asked Anne if The Storm Singers were any good.


"They were fantastic!" Anne said.


"Really?"


"I never thought they'd be as good as that."


Rachel was looking for a band to play at a party she was organising with some friends to mark the retirement of one of their former teachers. She had booked a local band called 'Coal Shed' because she liked an album they released.


After she booked them for the retirement party, she said to the lead singer, "I love the last song on the album. It's the perfect way to end it."


"That one's about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas," he said.


"Oh... I love the first song too. It's sort of a love song, isn't it?"


"No, that one's about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas too."


"What about 'A Little Blackbird'? Isn't that a song about a blackbird, a little one?"


"That one's also about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas."


"Oh right."


"The whole album is about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas. That's why we called it 'Buying a Greyhound with a Box of Bananas'."


"Yeah, I was wondering about that... What about 'I Love Her Eyes'?"


"That one's about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas too."


She regretted booking them for the party after this conversation, and when Anne told her how good The Storm Singers were, she decided to give the gig to them instead. She told Coal Shed that the whole party was cancelled, but Craig knew the lead singer of Coal Shed. A rivalry had been developing between the two bands, and Craig told them about their performance at the retirement party.


The Storm Singers were delighted to get the gig, but Craig wondered why they got it after their silence on TV. Rachel said they were fantastic on TV, and he tried to figure out what it was about their performance that was so good.


He called around to see her one evening to discuss the details of the party, and when he was leaving, he met Uncle Harry in the garden. Harry was looking at a hole in the grass. Craig asked him about the hole and Harry said, "A jazz band dug it."


"Why?"


"I don't know. I've never understood jazz."


That's when Craig figured out why their silent performance was so good. "It's jazz!" he said. "That's what we were doing."


So when they got on the stage at local hall, where the retirement party was being held, Craig said, "We'd like to do a jazz number we've been working on. It's called, ah... It doesn't really have a name."


They stood in silence. Coal Shed were near the front, trying to intimidate them, but it didn't work. After three minutes, Craig said, "Thank you very much."


Ted and Anne applauded, and everyone else joined in. None of them really understood jazz.


They all went back to Bridget and Harry's house, and Anne suggested that The Storm Singers perform near the trees in the garden. They stood there in silence again. This time there was no breeze, but they still got a huge round of applause at the end.


Coal Shed were jealous, so they offered to 'perform' a song. They went for a jazz version too, but after a minute of silence, the bass player's phone rang. He answered it and said, "Hello... How many times have I told you, it's in the bloody attic."


They waited in silence for another minute, and then the lead singer said, "That one was about buying a greyhound with a box of bananas."


No one applauded.


Hugh was in the kitchen experimenting with the drinks. A friend of his had made a drink with orange juice, cream, and a lot of alcohol. Hugh was trying to recreate this. He had made a few attempts at it already, but it was never exactly right. When he had finished mixing his latest effort, he said, "Did I add in the alcohol?"


He drank the drink in one go just to test it for alcohol, then he looked at the empty glass for a few seconds and said, "No."


He staggered to the table to get the whiskey, and he mixed another drink.


He was walking very carefully when he went out into the back garden a few minutes later. Coal Shed were getting ready to perform another song. Rachel wanted to avoid a repeat of their last performance, so she said to Hugh, "Will you sing us a song?"


"Okay," Hugh said. "Any requests?"


"Just sing whatever you want to sing."


"Right." Hugh looked up at the sky as he tried to think of what to sing. He noticed the stars coming out above and he completely forgot about the song. He spent the next three minutes staring up at the sky. When he looked down again he remembered where he was and said, "Did I just sing a song?"


"You did," Rachel said, and everyone applauded.


Hugh's fiancee, Annabel, came out into the garden and saw everyone applauding him. She wondered if he'd just sung a song, and she remembered the last time he sang in the pub. It started out as a song about love, but he couldn't remember all of the lyrics, and it ended up as a song about the time she tried to open her front door with a spoon. He made up the bit about how she found the spoon.


She said to Uncle Harry, "Did Hugh just sing a song?"


"He did."


"Did he sing the song about me opening the door with a spoon?"


"Ahm... he..."


"He did, didn't he?"


"Ah..."


Then she went to Hugh and said, "Did you sing the song about me opening the door with a spoon?"


"I... ah..."


"You did, didn't you?"


"Well..."


She found a shovel nearby and she chased him around the garden with that. The chase came to an end when Hugh fell into a hole. "At least there's a tune to that one," Harry said.


Annabel threatened to hit Hugh with the shovel if he tried to get out of the hole. Everyone stood around them, watching the stand-off, and the lead singer of Coal Shed said, "We have a song that's perfect for this occasion." The guitarist strummed his guitar and the singer sang. "He was the quickest greyhound that night. Our box of bananas was heavy. That poor doggie looked so sad in the light..."


The moose's head over the fireplace has been smiling at me over the past few days, ever since I tripped over a box on the ground. I had put the box on the ground about three seconds before I tripped over it. I explained my side of the story to the candle stick - that I was distracted by the sound of the phone ringing. Not that I was expecting any sympathy from the candle stick. It was really just so the moose's head would hear my story, but he's still smiling at me. I would have spoken to the hen in the painting rather than the candle stick, but the constant look of surprise on the hen's face makes it difficult to keep a conversation going.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Singing in the rain


There are more leaves on the lawn every day, and less on the trees. The light in the shed keeps flickering. The dog is using this as an excuse to carry an ashtray everywhere he goes, refusing to give it back.


My Uncle Harry and Aunt Bridget bought a new chandelier for their hall, and Harry decided to install it himself. Bridget was very much against this idea, but he insisted that the operation would be a breeze with the help of his son, Ronan, and my cousin Hugh. They started the job one Saturday morning, and the only real worry on Harry's mind was the presence of Bridget. He knew she'd be constantly supervising them, telling them not to even dare try that thing with the rope and the gas. Hugh was given the job of getting Bridget out of the house, and he came up with the perfect plan.


A friend of his, William, was a tenor. William's girlfriend had left him a few weeks earlier, and after she left he spent a few hours in the pub drowning his sorrows. He came out at three o' clock in the afternoon and spent the next few hours singing in the rain. A huge crowd gathered for his free concert. When Bridget heard about this she told Hugh that she was sorry she missed it, because she had heard him sing before and he had a beautiful voice. There was something very appealing about the idea of him singing in the rain too.


On this Saturday morning, Hugh went to see William and told him that he'd just seen Ruth (his ex-girlfriend) in the park, laughing and running through the leaves with her friends. The idea of Ruth being so happy made William even more miserable. He went to the pub with Hugh, and an hour later (after numerous rounds of drinks bought by Hugh) William was singing outside the pub. A huge crowd gathered again, despite the wind and occasional showers.


Hugh called Bridget on the phone and told her about the performance. While she was on her way to the pub, Hugh went back to the house to help with the chandelier. She was very impressed with William's singing. He sang for over two hours, and his concert finally came to an end during one very heavy shower. The crowd left, but he stayed standing there. Bridget said to him, "I thought you were fantastic."


"Thanks," he said, staring off into the distance.


A dog had been sitting next to William during the entire performance, and Bridget noticed that the dog looked very sad. She mentioned this and William said, "He's sad because he lost his shoes. And I know that feeling."


Bridget said goodbye and walked back towards the house, but on the way she wondered what he meant when he said that the dog had lost his shoes. Would this imply that the dog used to wear shoes? When she got home and went into the hall, the ground was covered in cardboard boxes. Harry, Ronan and Hugh all looked towards her, but she didn't seem to notice the boxes at all. She was still thinking about the dog's shoes, and she decided to go back to William to ask him about it.


He was still standing outside the pub when she got there, and the dog still looked as sad as ever. She said to William, "Did you say your dog had shoes?"


"Well, they weren't really his shoes. He took them."


"Oh right... And when you said you know that feeling, does that mean that you lost your shoes too?"


"Yes."


"How did you lose them?"


"I don't know. And I don't care."


"Right... Is something wrong?"


"My girlfriend left me."


"Oh yeah. I remember Hugh saying something about that... Why did she leave, if you don't mind me asking?"


"I've no idea."


"No idea at all?"


"Absolutely no idea at all."


"Have you tried talking to her?"


"Yes. But she won't talk to me."


"Maybe I could try talking to her. I might be able to get to the bottom of it."


William said it was worth a try, and he told her how to get to Ruth's house.


Ruth was an artist, and she told Bridget about a painting she did a few weeks ago. When she'd finished it she stood back and looked at it, but something seemed to be missing. "It doesn't seem quite finished," she said. Then she stook a spanner through it. "Now it's finished."


William asked her where she got the spanner and she didn't know. She didn't really care either, but it was actually her uncle's spanner. He had been there to put a new handle on the door, and the spanner was in his tool box. He was keen to get it back too, because it was one of his favourite spanners, but Ruth refused to let him take it out of the painting. So he bought the painting to get it back. She said to him, "You're not just buying this to get the spanner back, are you?"


"No, no," he said. "I'm buying it because I really like this painting."


But when Ruth and William were visiting his house about a week later, she noticed something different about the painting. She looked closely at it, and then said to her uncle, "You've replaced the spanner with another one, haven't you?"


He denied this too, but he'd obviously just bought a new one in the shop and put it into the painting. He said, "What difference does it make? It's just a spanner. It makes no difference to the painting. I don't even know what it's a painting of."


"It's a woman looking at a bare tree," Ruth said.


"I'd say even without the spanner you couldn't tell that."


"William, you knew it was a woman looking at a bare tree, didn't you?"


"I thought it was a cow," William said.


This is why Ruth left him. "I know it might seem like an over-reaction," she said to Bridget, "but I'm very sensitive about my art. And he should know that."


Bridget went back to William and told him the story that Ruth had told her. He didn't know what to make of it at first, but then it all became clear to him. He took out a pen and showed it to Bridget. There was a tiny cow in the pen, but when you turned it upside down, the back half of the cow slowly moved away from the front to reveal two people dressed up as a pantomime cow. "I was looking at that," William said.


Bridget and William went to see Ruth. He waited outside while she went in with the pen. She told Ruth about William looking at the pen, and Ruth remembered that he'd been looking at it for over a day before that incident with the painting, and he was looking at it when he said, "I thought it was a cow."


Ruth and William were re-united, and Bridget was very happy with her day's work. Then Ruth took a pair of shoes from a bag and said to the dog, "A man with a pencil in his hat found these." The dog's tail was wagging so much, it was just a blur.


Bridget walked home with a smile on her face. When she stepped into the hall, there was a budgie balancing on a wire that extended from the bannister on the landing to the wall opposite it. Hugh was holding onto the bannister by his finger tips, and Ronan was standing beneath the budgie with a net. Harry was saying, "Now wait a second... Wait a second."


"The chandelier is lovely," Bridget said.


The moose's head over the fireplace has been doing his best to ignore the parrot in the room. The bird is owned by the wife's aunt, and we're looking after it while she's on holiday. The parrot keeps saying 'what are you looking at?' The moose's head just ignores it, but the hen in the painting doesn't know how to respond. It just stares back at the parrot, looking surprised. And the bird keeps saying 'what are you looking at?'