Baking Chairs

We had snow last week, and it stayed on the ground for a while too. Everything in the garden was covered in snow, but I'm sure the dog likes to think he buried it all.

My Uncle Ben was in a restaurant with some friends of his, and about half-way through the main course, one of the friends, Stan, recognised the waiter at another table. A man had called the waiter over to complain about his meal. He said, "Tell the chef I've seen things stuck to buildings that are more appetising than this."

"Certainly, sir," the waiter said. "I'm sure he'll appreciate the opinion of the furniture."

"Are you trying to imply that the chef appreciates the opinion of furniture?"

"No, sir. You're an idiot and there's a cat on your lap."

"That's my grandmother's cat. Are you trying to insult my grandmother?"

"No, sir. I'm trying to insult you, and so is the cat."

"Just because it's digging its claws into my groin, don't assume it's trying to insult me."

Stan told them that the waiter, Frederick, used to be a brilliant butler, but he had a habit of insulting people. And when he couldn't insult people he'd start swearing. But he had to work as a waiter because there wasn't much call for butlers any more, especially one who either swears or insults people.

Ben always wanted to have a butler, but he couldn't afford one. When Stan said that Frederick still works part-time as a butler, Ben called him over and asked if he'd do a bit of butlering at a garden party in a few weeks. Frederick said he'd be delighted to, although not in so many words. Or actually in one word more, and this other word made Ben wonder if it was wise to hire him after all. He had to choose between allowing the butler to swear at or to insult his guests at the party. Neither of these options were desirable, but by the end of the meal he'd come up with a plan to avoid both.

He asked Frederick if he'd work at his house for a few hours, a few times every week, just to get used to the place, and to make sure the house was in perfect condition for the party. When he turned up at Ben's place on the following day, my cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, were there too. Ben had told them about the swearing, and he wanted them to teach the butler all of the latest swear words. When Frederick was looking through the cupboards in the kitchen, Jane said, "That baking kettle is always on the blink."

"Sorry about her," Claudia said to Frederick, then she turned to Jane and said, "You can't use language like that in front of a butler."

"You don't mind words like 'baking', do you, Frederick?"

The butler used the words 'absolutely', 'not' and one one other word in between.

"And I wouldn't use the dishwasher," Jane said. "The man who came to repair that is a baking sandwich."

"They're all bakers," Frederick said. Jane and Claudia were delighted to see that they were having such an effect already. He picked up a lot of other new swear words from them, like 'chair' or 'dynasty'.

My cousin Ronan had started playing chess with his girlfriend, Audrey, and he really enjoyed it at first because she was so easy to beat, but then she tried to figure out how to actually play the game. It was still just as easy to beat her, but the whole process was much more difficult to endure. He was constantly explaining the rules to her. It got worse when someone gave her a weasel glove puppet for her birthday, and she thought the chess would be more fun if she got the weasel to play for her.

It wasn't more fun for Ronan. He still had to explain the rules every few seconds, but Audrey made him talk to the puppet on her hand. The weasel would nod as Ronan spoke, but then the puppet would look around the board, wondering what piece to move, and Ronan would have to explain the situation again.

Things got worse when she wrote a song to remember the rules of chess. It was much more difficult to endure the games while the weasel was singing the song (and he sang it before every move), but it was also becoming more difficult to beat Audrey, or the weasel. The fact that she refused to call any of pieces by their correct name annoyed him too. The song started with the line 'The little prawny things are very, very shy'.

He called in to Ben's house one day. Jane and Claudia were passing on some more swear words to the butler. They were watching the racing on TV while Frederick polished the silver. One of the racing pundits said, "He beat Baker Tom at Leopardstown when the going was good, but I wouldn't be betting a doghouse on him."

"He'll probably get fired for saying that," Jane said.

Claudia said, "I never thought I'd hear anyone say 'doghouse' on TV at this time of the day."

Ronan had backed a horse in the next race, but it fell at the first. He didn't want to swear in front of the butler, and the only way he could express his frustration was by reciting a few lines from Audrey's song. "The plastic horsie can't jump over any other square, and the little royal crown is mostly sitting on his chair."

He said it with such anger and resentment that the butler was convinced it must be even worse than what the TV chef said about the F-ing bakers.

"Where did you learn language like that?" Jane said.

"Audrey. I'm very sorry for saying it at all, but I have to put up with that stuff all the time."

Ben was delighted with his decision to hire Frederick for the party. His new butler took care of all the preparations, and everything was looking perfect. He chose the very best food and wine.

Before the guests arrived, Ben said to Frederick, "I know this might be a lot to ask, but would you mind keeping the insults to an absolute minimum? You can swear as much as you like, but no insults, if at all possible."

"That's baking fine, sir."

Frederick continued using words like 'baking' and 'sandwich' after the guests arrived. When someone complimented him on his choice of wine he said, "Thank you, sir. I'd have got another case of it but the supplier is a royal dynasty."

When people wondered about these expressions, Ben said, "His mother is Spanish." This was the best explanation he could come up with for the butler's colourful language.

Jane and Claudia decided to taste as much of the wine as they could, taking just a tiny amount from each bottle. Their estimate of 'tiny' became more unreliable as the evening went on. Most of the guests were still in the garden as the stars came out. Jane and Claudia joined them on the lawn after re-filling their glasses with one of the final wines. Jane took a 'tiny' sip from it and said, "It tastes like... fruit of some sort."

"That's absolutely nothing like fruit," Claudia said. "Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all like fruit. It's more like... flowers."

"You're a royal sandwich if you think that's like flowers."

"Me? A royal sandwich? You were the one who said that bottle of Chardonnay tasted like paper. You're a plastic robot."

"You've been sitting on your chair all night like a baking horsie, saying everything is like flowers. You'd get more sense from a baking square."

The other guests all looked towards them as the argument became heated.

"I was just thinking that about you," Claudia said. "You keep saying 'fruit' or 'paper' or 'the colour of those curtains'. You sound like a royal, baking crown."

"Right, that's enough," Frederick said. "Go somewhere else if ye're going to use that sort of language."

"But you've been swearing all night," Claudia said.

"Yeah, but I never used the 'C' word."

The other guests all saw the reason for the butler's strange statements, and it was a much more convincing reason than a Spanish mother. One woman was too shocked to say anything when he offered to fill her royal glass.

Ben wanted to get people's minds off the butler's language, so he suggested that they all go inside for a bit of music. He convinced a few people to sing a song, and he accompanied them on the piano. His guests forgot about the swearing, and the atmosphere of earlier was restored.

Ronan and Audrey dropped in on their way back from the theatre. Audrey was only too happy to sing a song. She said, "See if ye can guess what this one is about."

She started singing the song she wrote to remember the rules of chess, and no one guessed what it was about from 'the little prawny things', but then she sang about the royal crown, and the lyrics suddenly made sense to everyone there. They assumed that words like 'prawny' must be swear words too, maybe even worse than 'crown'. The song was non-stop swearing.

When she got to the end she smiled and waited for the round of applause, but everyone just stared at her in horror. One woman fainted.

"Get out," Frederick said to Audrey as he pointed at the door.

The moose's head over the fireplace is doing his best to look unimpressed with my break of 58 in snooker. Of course, he wasn't actually there to see it - I just went through the whole break shot-by-shot in front of the fireplace - so maybe he doesn't believe me. I did lie about scoring the winning goal in a preliminary round of the FAI Cup. But then the moose's head seemed very impressed with the wife's uncle's story about accidentally setting fire to a hotel room, and I didn't believe that at all.

Dizzy

All the leaves that were in the trees are on the ground, so I suppose there's more to look at on the ground now. Unless you want to look at the sky - there's more of that with the leaves on the ground. But there's only so much to see in the sky. The dog certainly prefers the ground. He spends most of his time walking around in the grass, sniffing at something. A hot air balloon passed by over the garden, and there was a man with a top hat in it. That made the sky slightly more interesting for a while, but then the dog dug up the thing he was sniffing, so the ground won out in the end.

My cousin Gary once met a man from Waterford called Dizzy, and every time he met someone from Waterford after this, he'd ask if they knew Dizzy. This went on for a few years, and he never met anyone who knew Dizzy, but he kept asking.

My cousin Hugh got a friend of his to pretend that he was from Waterford and his name was Dizzy. When he introduced this friend to Gary as Dizzy, Gary said, "You're not from Waterford by any chance, are you?"

"I am."

"No way! Do you know another Dizzy from Waterford?"

"No. But 'Dizzy' is a very common name in Waterford."

Hugh met eight rowers from a British university. They had come over here for a training camp, and they were staying near where Hugh lived. The 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar was coming up, and Hugh decided to set up an Admiral Nelson school just for the rowers. He told them they could all take part in his re-creation of the battle, and they could all be Nelson.

Hugh got the idea for the re-creation when he was talking to his cousin, Ronan, who was studying English in college. Ronan was telling him about the English classes he was giving to some French students who'd just arrived in the country, and a friend of his was giving classes to Spanish students. Hugh suggested setting up a battle between the Brits on one side and the Spanish and French on the other. Ronan was all for the idea. Neither of them were keen on celebrating a famous British victory, but they thought there was a fair chance that the Nelsons would lose this time because they could only use one arm.

So Hugh started teaching the Nelson classes in his house twice a week. He got them all coats and hats, and they kept one arm inside the coat. But then he saw how happy Gary was to meet another Dizzy from Waterford, and he got the idea of getting all the Nelsons to pretend that they were Dizzy from Waterford too. So he taught them how to speak in a Waterford accent, and he told them that this was the way Nelson would have spoken to his crew. He taught them basic phrases like 'There's a funny looking dog on the van there now', or 'It's a long way to Tipperary, thanks be to God'. He said to them, "If anyone ever asks ye a question, answer it with this phrase: 'As long as we beat Cork in the hurling, I don't care. Or those feckers from Kilkenny'. Repeat after me: As long as we beat Cork in the hurling, I don't care."

The whole class said, "As long as we beat Cork in the hurling, I don't care."

"Or those feckers from Kilkenny."

"Or those feckers from Kilkenny."

"Very good."

He taught them a story that began with the line, "I knew a man from Dungarvan who bet on a horse called 'Train Set'."

He told them that Nelson was always known by his nickname, Dizzy, and when he felt they had all mastered the Waterford accent and phrases, he took them to meet Gary. He told them that if they could fool his cousin into thinking that they were really Nelson (or Dizzy) they'd be ready for the re-enactment.

They were all wearing their hats and coats, with one arm inside the coat. Hugh said, "This is my cousin, Gary."

The first Nelson said, "My name is Dizzy and I'm from Waterford."

"No way!" Gary said. "Another one!"

Another Nelson said, "I'm also Dizzy and I'm from Waterford too."

"Y' know, I can remember someone saying that it was a very common name in Waterford alright."

When the final Nelson introduced himself, Gary said to him, "What part of Waterford do you come from?"

The Nelson looked over at Hugh, who coughed and said 'hurling' under his breath. The Nelson turned to Gary again and said, "As long as we beat Cork in the hurling, I don't care. Or those feckers from Kilkenny."

"Yeah, I'd love if ye beat Kilkenny," Gary said.

Another Nelson said, "I knew a man from Dungarvan who bet on a horse called 'Train Set' because he once set a train set on fire, but the horse fell at the first. He tried to punch someone who was dressed up as Dracula too, but I think that was because of something else."

Hugh had such fun teaching them to be Dizzy from Waterford that he completely forgot about the re-enactment. He was planning to stage the battle outside a pub, which was near a small stone bridge over a stream. On the day of the battle he remembered that they were supposed to be Nelson rather than Dizzy, and he tried to get them to say things like 'Look, a ship', but they kept reverting to their Waterford accents and the phrases they'd already learnt.

Ronan thought they could still instigate a battle, even if all the Nelsons thought they were from Waterford. He taught his French students phrases like 'Waterford couldn't beat Kilkenny if half of the Kilkenny team were dachshunds'. His friend who was teaching the Spanish students taught them to say things like 'I only wish Waterford was further away from Tipperary'.

Ronan had told the two groups of students that they were going to watch a re-creation of the battle of Trafalgar, but he never mentioned that they'd be part of the battle. He took them to the pub near the stream, and Hugh arrived shortly afterwards with his Nelsons. They were wearing the hats and coats. A big crowd had gathered there, and a lot of money was riding on the battle. Some people bet on the Nelsons, despite the fact that they could only use one arm. They thought the Brits would come up with some unexpected strategy. Hugh didn't think that was very likely.

My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, were there too. Claudia plays the keyboard, and Hugh had asked her to play a piece of music at the battle. She said she knew a piece about Napoleon, and Hugh said that'd be perfect. He also got Jane involved. He asked her to announce the start of the battle.

Before they went to the pub, Claudia played the piece for Jane, who said, "How was that about Napoleon?"

"It just was."

"That had nothing to do with Napoleon."

"Well how would a piece of music have something to do with Napoleon?"

"You're the one who says it was about Napoleon. You tell me."

"I don't know enough about Napoleon to see the connection."

"He wasn't very tall. A piece of music about Napoleon would be quiet. Or quieter than music about someone taller."

"That's ridiculous. If the only thing you know about Napoleon is that he wasn't very tall, then you don't know enough about him either. This next piece of music is about someone who knows lots of things about lots of different things." Claudia played a very quick piece of music, then she said, "And this one is about you." She played a very slow piece.

When Hugh arrived at the pub with his Nelson class, he pointed at the French students and said, "They're from Kilkenny." Then he pointed at the Spanish and said, "And they're from Tipperary."

The Nelsons went over to the students and said, "It's a long way to Tipperary, thanks be to God."

One of the Spanish students said, "I only wish Waterford was further away from Tipperary."

The Nelson said, "There's a funny looking dog on the van there now."

And then one of the French students said, "Waterford couldn't beat Kilkenny if half of the Kilkenny team were dachshunds."

"I knew a man from Dungarvan," the Nelson said in a very threatening voice, and he poked the French student in the shoulder when he said 'garvan'. "He once bet on a horse called 'Train Set' because he once set a train set on fire, but the horse fell at the first. He tried to punch someone who was dressed up as Dracula too, but I think that was because of something else."

Hugh thought that if Jane announced the commencement of the battle now, it would surely start a fight, so he made the signal to her. She stood up, and Claudia started playing her keyboard, but she was playing the slow piece of music that supposedly represented Jane, and she was playing it very slowly. Jane recognised the music, and she stopped just as she was about to speak, with her mouth slightly open. She remained in that position, and Claudia kept playing the same note. Everone looked at Jane. She remained frozen in that position for about thirty seconds, with the same note playing all the time.

She sat down again, and there was silence. Neither the Nelsons nor the students knew what to say then. One of the Nelsons eventually broke the silence. He said, "We've won! Hooray!"

All of the other Nelsons cheered, and the students looked dejected, but not as dejected as Ronan and Hugh. They had both bet a lot of money on the French and Spanish.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't like most TV programs, especially 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here'. We bought an ipod for him so he can ignore what's on TV. Sometimes it's more interesting to look at his facial expression and try to figure out what he's listening to, rather than watch what's on TV. His facial expression remains pretty much the same all the time, but it's still more interesting. Even looking at the surprised hen in the painting is more interesting than TV, and that expression never changes. It'd take a lot more than a hot air balloon to make me look away from that.

A Dot on the Carpet

We've had a few days without rain. It's possible to do things in the garden again, or do nothing in the garden. That's about all you can do, as long as the wife's niece isn't practising her violin. She plays it in the garden for the birds. It serves them right for their so-called singing.

My cousin Hector and his wife, Liz, bought a cream carpet for their front room. After it was installed, Hector noticed a small red dot on the carpet. He pointed at it and said, "Is that dot meant to be there?"

"No, it's not," Liz said.

They looked closely over all of the carpet, but there was just one single red dot. Liz phoned the carpet shop about it, and they sent someone out to see the dot. But when he saw it he said, "That's meant to be there," and he showed them a sample of the carpet with the red dot. Liz asked him why they'd sell a carpet with a single red dot on it, and he said, "We didn't really think anyone would buy it until you came along."

The dot always annoyed Liz. It was the first thing people saw when they went into the room, and they saw little else because they kept looking at the dot. But one day, when Liz walked into the room, she barely noticed the dot at all. She wondered why this could be. She looked around the room, and she saw a red cup on the coffee table. When she took the cup away, the dot became more noticeable again. She tried placing the cup in various positions on the coffee table, and then standing back to look at the room. Some positions hid the dot better than others, and after a few minutes experimenting with this, she found a position for the cup on the coffee table that made the dot almost invisible.

It was the perfect way to hide the dot. No one noticed it when they came into the room, and everyone said they loved the new carpet. But the dot became noticeable again when Hector bought her some red roses for their anniversary. When she put them in a vase in the room, the dot on the carpet and the cup on the table stood out. She wondered if there was something else she could add to the room to restore the balance. She was looking for something red, and she saw a lamp with a red shade in a shop one day, so she bought that and brought it home. She found the perfect position for it on a small table in the corner. It restored the balance of the room, and the roses, the dot and the cup on the table all became less noticeable again, but it only worked when the light was off.

This balance didn't last long. Hector bought a painting of people in a room and he hung it on the wall. It was a nice painting, but it was dominated by bright red curtains. When Liz came into the room she noticed the lamp, the roses, the cup and the dot on the carpet, especially the dot.

She had trouble finding something else to restore the balance, but her twin daughters, Alice and Grace, solved the problem for her. They made a little Santa hat for their Labrador puppy. When Liz saw him wearing the hat, she took him into the front room, and after a lot of careful adjustment, they found the perfect place for him near the TV. The dot, the cup, the roses, the lamp, the painting and the puppy himself were almost invisible. Liz was always telling the puppy to stay when he was near the TV, and giving him biscuits if he stayed there. She put his basket on the carpet there too.

Hector and his brother, Albert, were in the city one Saturday and they saw a mime artist who was breakdancing. "I think he's confused," Hector said.

They also saw two men going around to people on the street. One of them was dressed as a goalkeeper, and the other man was saying to people, "This man is looking for his brother. He's a goalkeeper." The man dressed as a goalkeeper put his hands out then.

"I don't know what he is," Hector said.

When they got home and walked into the front room, they noticed the dot, the cup, the roses, the lamp, the painting and the puppy, who was sleeping in his basket. The roses were starting to wilt, and the petals were falling off. Hector thought that this must be the reason for the breakdown in the balance.

"I wonder if the breakdancing mime artist could make everything invisible again," Albert said.

"There's only one way to find out."

They went back to the city, and Hector asked the mime artist if he'd stand in a room for a few minutes. The mime artist pretended not to hear until Hector mentioned money.

So they took the mime home and they found the perfect position for him in the room. All of the other things faded from view once more, including the mime himself. Then he started breakdancing, and the other things remained almost invisible, but it was blatantly obvious that there was a breakdancing mime artist in the room. Hector asked him to stop, but he pretended not to hear again.

Albert said, "Maybe the brother of the goalkeeper is a goalkeeper, and they dressed him up like his brother to see if anyone would recognise him."

"What about the breakdancing mime artist?"

"I don't know about him... Do you think the goalkeeper and the man with him would make the mime invisible?"

"It's worth a try."

They went back to the city and brought home the goalkeeper and the man with him, and the two of them did distract from the breakdancing mime artist, until the man with the goalkeeper said, "Hey, this is the guy who wouldn't answer our questions earlier," and started poking the mime artist in the shoulder.

Hector asked him to stop, but he kept doing it and saying things like, "You think you're too good for us with your breakdancing."

Hector and Albert tried to think of what they could get to balance this out before Liz got home.

She had gone for a walk with Hector's mother, Aunt Audrey. When they got back and went into the front room, there was a brawl that involved a soccer team with two identical goalkeepers, the mime artist, the man who was with the goalkeeper, a women's hockey team and a cowboy. Hector was trying to calm things down, but he was impeded because the puppy was clinging to his leg. Albert was taking photos.

Audrey pointed at the dot on the carpet and said, "Is that a stain?"

Liz said, "It's... Is that a spider on the ceiling?"

When Audrey looked up, Liz looked around the room to see if there was any way of restoring the balance. She turned on the lamp and said, "What stain?"

Audrey looked down again. "I... I thought I saw a stain... The room is looking lovely."

"Thanks."

"Especially the carpet. I love the colour."

"Yeah. I must show you what we've been doing to the garden in the back."

They left as the mime had one of the goalkeepers in a headlock, and the hockey team were attacking the back four of the soccer team. Even the bloodstains on the carpet blended into the background.

The moose's head over the fireplace has looked confused ever since the wife's uncle told a story of an encounter with a cow on a narrow road, but after a few glasses of brandy it became a story about wearing a fake beard and glasses at the opening of a museum. But it could have been The Smurfs on TV that confused the moose's head too. I could understand that. Thand God he's never seen the Teletubbies.

First Aid

The wind and rain are back again. It's time to bring in any of the garden furniture that might get blown away. Most of it is either wood or metal, and one table is welded to a trailer. My grandfather did that after daring someone to steal the table. Then he realised that the trailer could be attached to a car and the table would be gone with it, so he tied a goat to the other end of the trailer. The sensible thing to do would be to tie the goat to the table, and forget about the trailer, but then daring people to steal tables wouldn't be an indication of sense either.

My cousin Ronan had a friend called Charlie who was training to be a doctor. Ronan's mother, Aunt Bridget, asked Charlie to give a first aid demonstration at a town fete one summer day. He asked her what a first aid demonstration would have to do with a town fete, and she said, "Well what do bikers with sinister looking budgies have to do with town fetes?"

Charlie didn't know how to answer this question, and Bridget took his silence as an agreement to do the demonstration.

On the day of the fete, he got the demonstration over with as quickly as possible. It was a bit of a nightmare because no one laughed at any of his jokes, but at least it didn't last long. He tried to enjoy the rest of the fete, and even he had to agree that the biker with the sinister budgie was much more entertaining than his performance with the first aid. But for Charlie, the most entertaining part of the whole day was when Ronan slipped on some ice cream and hit his head off a garden gnome.

Charlie laughed at that, but then he thought it wouldn't look good for a trainee doctor to be laughing at accidents. He thought he should at least try to administer some form of first aid, especially after his demonstration. And there were a few press photographers around too.

Ronan seemed to be more dazed than injured. He lay on the ground, looking around him. Charlie got out his stethoscope and put it to Ronan's chest because he thought people would be impressed by that, but he heard a funny noise coming from it. He wondered if the source of the noise was Ronan or the stethoscope, so he put the stethoscope to the stem of a sunflower, and he still heard the noise.

A photographer took a photo of him, and the next day he saw himself on the front page of the paper, listening to a sunflower through his stethoscope while an injured man lay on the ground next to him. It became a political issue, with the opposition claiming that it summed up all of the problems with Department of Health.

Charlie was furious with this, but Ronan said he had a plan to put everything right. Aunt Bridget had grown an exceptionally large tomato in her glasshouse, and a photographer from a local paper was due to photograph it on the following day. Ronan's plan was to stage an accident while the photographer was there, and then she could take photos of Charlie looking very competent in his medical response.

On the following morning, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, were standing on the top floor of a tall building in the city, looking down on all the buildings around them, the sun reflecting off glass and rooftops. Claudia pointed at something and said, "What's that?"

An inflatable rabbit floated by. "It looks like an inflatable rabbit," Jane said.

They looked at it for over a minute, until it disappeared from view, and then they ran to the lifts.

The photographer arrived in the afternoon, and Aunt Bridget took her to the glasshouse. Ronan was on a ladder at the back of the house, pretending to look for something in the ivy. His brother, Alan, was reading a book in the garden. "I'm reading a book about a shovel," he said to Charlie. "It's a biography."

While the photographer was looking at the tomato in the glasshouse, Ronan got down off the ladder as quietly as he could, and then he went to the rockery, where he lay down on the rocks. Charlie put the ladder on the ground next to him. The plan was that Ronan would scream, the photographer would turn around and see him on the rockery, and assume he'd fallen off the ladder, and then Charlie would get to work with the first aid.

But just before Ronan screamed, he pointed at something in the sky and said, "What's that?"

Charlie looked up. "It looks like an inflatable rabbit," he said.

They kept looking up. Jane and Claudia were also looking up as they ran after the rabbit through the garden, but they fell into a hole. They dragged themselves out. They were bruised, and their clothes were dirty and torn. They crawled along the ground, looking up at the rabbit, trying in vain to reach up, with tears in their eyes and a look of desperation on their faces.

In the photo that appeared in the paper on the following day, it looked as if they were trying to get the attention of the doctor, who was just looking up at the sky, also ignoring the man who'd fallen off a ladder onto the rockery.

Charlie was furious with Ronan this time, but Ronan blamed it all on Alan, who had dug the hole. He said he got the idea from the book about the shovel. He had started reading it because he wanted to forget about the recent split with his girlfriend, Sonia. The book provided the distraction he was looking for until he came to the chapter about the shovel's starring role in a TV series about an athlete. The shovel played the part of the athlete. They used to throw the shovel to show him running, but the man who threw the shovel became disillusioned with his job. The more depressed he became, the more half-hearted were his throws, and the show took on a melancholic air. Sometimes the shovel would just drop on the ground in front of the camera and lie there, completely motionless in a field, with bare trees in the background. All this changed when he fell in love with the woman who was playing the athlete's girlfriend in the show. He was happy again, and his shovel-throwing was rejuvenated. The show lost its appeal because people liked the melancholic feel to it, but the man who threw the shovel didn't care, and neither did the woman who played the shovel's girlfriend.

Alan had never expected to find a love story in a book about a shovel, and this only made him depressed, so he didn't even respond when Ronan blamed him for the way the photo shoot went wrong.

Ronan convinced Charlie to have another go at his plan, and he convinced his mother to phone the photographer and tell her that the tomato had become even bigger. This time they were going to make it look as if Ronan had stood in a snare. Charlie thought it was unbelievable that someone could step in a snare in a garden, but Ronan said that in the previous year he'd seen at least ten photos of people stuck in snares in the local newspaper.

When the photographer called around again, my cousin June and her kids, Daisy and Graham, were there, and they had brought their pet duck, Sleepy. Bridget showed the tomato to the photographer. She said, "I think it must have shrunk again overnight, but I have a photo of another tomato you might be interested in. It's one my grandmother grew, and it's about twice as big as this one."

Bridget went into the house to get the photo, but Ronan still hadn't had his 'accident' with the snare, and they needed something to distract the photographer. Fortunately, Alan provided the distraction. He was throwing a shovel near the fence at the back of the garden, but his throws were very half-hearted because he was still thinking of Sonia. He'd throw it a few feet away, then look at it for a while, walk slowly over to it, and pick it up. Then he'd throw it back in the other direction. The photographer stood near by and watched him.

This was the perfect opportunity for Ronan to stage his accident. He lay down on the grass and put the snare around his leg. The spring on the snare was broken, so it didn't hurt him. He put fake blood on his leg to make it look realistic. Charlie opened his medical bag to make sure everything was there, but his stethoscope was missing. He looked around, and he saw that Daisy and Graham had it nearby. Sleepy was asleep on the grass, and Graham was holding the ear pieces of the stethoscope at either side of the duck's head. Charlie didn't want to have a sleeping duck in the photo, let alone a duck with his stethoscope, but he couldn't call out to the kids in case he'd attract the attention of the photographer.

Aunt Bridget's peacock was fascinated by the sleeping duck. He moved slowly towards Sleepy, and when he got there, Daisy put the other end of the stethoscope on the peacock's head. This was even worse than the sleeping duck with the stethoscope, Charlie thought.

But the photographer was still looking at Alan throwing the shovel. There was something very depressing about his throwing, and she asked him if something was wrong. He told her about how he split with Sonia because she said she'd rather listen to her cat fighting with the ironing board than the AC/DC CDs he plays in his car. He refused to play something else, and she always plays music he hates in her car. The photographer said to him, "Why don't ye agree to listen to the radio in both cars?"

"Yeah... Yeah, you're right. I'm going right over there now to tell her that."

Alan was happy again, and he wanted to throw the shovel as far away as he possibly could. He faced towards the field behind the garden and put all of his strength into the throw, but before he released the shovel he saw a rabbit floating across the sky above the field. He was afraid he might hit it, so he held onto the shovel. He couldn't stop himself falling over the fence and into a hole he'd dug at the other side.

The photographer turned around to see if Charlie was there, so he could provide whatever medical assistance Alan needed, but she saw Ronan lying on the ground with a snare and blood on his leg, the sleeping duck with the stethoscope held to his head, and the other end of the stethoscope on the peacock's head. Daisy and Graham smiled, and so did Ronan. Charlie was standing in the middle of all this. He didn't move, and neither did the photographer. She just stood there looking at the scene, and Charlie started to think that he might just get away with it. But then the peacock spread his feathers and she took a photo.

Charlie bought the paper on the following day, expecting to see himself on the front page again, but the photo wasn't there. They chose to go with the photo of Alan with his head stuck in a hole.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been trying to look as if he knows something I don't. He's been like that since I was looking in the sideboard for a pen and I found a half-full bottle of whiskey. I have a feeling I put it there but I don't know why or when. If it was full it would be more of a mystery. I don't know if the moose's head really knows something about how it got there or if he's just pretending to know in an attempt to make me feel as if there's something I should know. I've been trying to look as if I know too, but I think he sees through that. I wish the hen in the painting would stop looking so surprised.

The Dog with the Glasses

I can't remember the last time we had a day without rain, but it's always like that at this time of year. There's a wooden table in the garden that's survived countless winters. My grandmother bought it at an auction, but my grandfather never liked it. He once stood at the table with a saw in his hand, as if he was about to do something to it. And he did, but apparently he ended up breaking a pane of glass in the glasshouse instead. I don't know what he did to the table, but it sounds like my grandfather alright.

My cousin Isobel once dropped her handbag outside her back door, and most of the contents fell out. The dog came along to help her pick everything up, but he was more of a hindrance than a help. When she saw that he had her glasses in his mouth, she moved towards him very slowly and said, "Just put them back down on the ground very gently." But the dog moved away when she moved towards him.

Her fiance, Jack, saw all this from the kitchen. He got out his phone and called Isobel. When she answered he said, "Can I speak to the dog with the glasses please?"

"It's for you," Isobel said as she handed the phone to the dog. He was able to hold the phone and the glasses in his mouth at the same time. Jack looked on in shock. He had never expected that to happen. He was expecting Isobel to laugh and say it was very funny, like she did with all of his jokes. Or some of them anyway.

He said into the phone, "Put the phone and the glasses down on the grass." The dog didn't know where the voice was coming from, and he ran in circles, but he didn't give up the phone and the glasses.

Jack came outside and said, "Why did you give him the phone?"

"I wasn't thinking," Isobel said. "I was trying to figure out how to get my glasses back. And now I'll have to get my phone back as well."

My cousin Jane called around, and she said that she knew just the person to help. She called her cousin Mike because he had once been in a similar situation when a goose managed to get hold of his car keys, but he refused to even talk about that. He suggested calling June, and she suggested offering something else to the dog in exchange for the glasses and the phone.

Isobel put a cheese cake on the ground near the dog, but he didn't look in the slightest bit tempted by it. Jane kept calling other friends and relatives to see if they had any ideas. Uncle Harry offered to come around with his gun. Jane didn't ask what he intended to do with the gun, but she had a fair idea, so she said she'd call him back if they didn't find a better plan.

Her cousin Albert said he'd be there in minutes with a much better plan. He'd been at the greyhound track with his new girlfriend, Lisa, a few days before this. Albert placed a huge bet on the dog that kept looking at the hare as the dogs were being paraded before the race. But when the traps opened, the other dogs ran after the hare and the dog Albert bet on, Pencil Case, jumped over the fence and ran towards something in the centre of the track. "Oh yeah," Albert said. "That's not a hare at all."

Albert lost a lot of money that night, but he didn't mind because he had a great time with Lisa. After they left the track, they stood near his car in the car park, and he was just about to kiss her when Pencil Case ran by, closely followed by a group of people. Albert thought that Pencil Case couldn't be much of a greyhound if people were able to follow him so closely. The dog had a hat in his mouth. "So that's what it was," Albert said.

Lisa followed them to see how they'd get it back, and Albert had to follow too. The people running after the dog stopped when they got tired, and the dog stopped too. One of the men there said, "I know how to get it back. I have the best looking female greyhound you've ever seen."

Albert thought it looked just like every other greyhound, but Pencil Case was very impressed. He dropped the hat and ran towards her. So Albert decided to use a similar technique to retrieve the glasses and the phone from Isobel's dog. His neighbour had a female King Charles Spaniel, and he asked if he could borrow that for an hour or two. Albert had trouble understanding the concept of a female King Charles Spaniel. He thought it didn't sound female enough, so he tied a ribbon in a bow around the dog's neck. Then he wondered if that's just what a dog uncertain about his or her gender would do, but Lisa said that the other dog wouldn't think about these things at all.

He brought the dog to Isobel's house, and as soon as her dog saw the King Charles Spaniel, he dropped the glasses and the phone and ran towards her, just like the greyhound. The King Charles Spaniel looked frightened, but they managed to stop Isobel's dog before he got to her.

While Isobel was complimenting Albert on his plan, he got a call on his phone. It was from a man who asked if he could speak to the tree. Albert looked all around for the tree, but then he realised it was Jack on the phone. He was just about to tell Jack where to go when he noticed that the King Charles Spaniel had run off while he'd been looking for the tree. The dog was running away through the fields, followed very closely by Isobel's dog. Albert ran after them, and the others followed. The chase lasted a few minutes, until the King Charles Spaniel got tired and stopped, but when Albert got there she was growling at Isobel's dog, who slowly backed away. Albert said, "Well she's definitely a female anyway."

As they walked back towards the house, Albert said to Lisa, "Someone should take that phone away from Jack. People like him shouldn't be allowed have phones." After the success of his last plan, he thought about adapting it slightly to get the phone off Jack. He asked Lisa if she'd act as the female distraction, but she refused. She suggested using Jane. Albert said, "Maybe... I suppose putting a ribbon on her wouldn't do any good... It's worth a try anyway, I suppose."

He asked Jane if she'd take part in his plan and she said, "How am I going to distract him?"

"Just talk to him, about anything at all. Ask him something about airplanes. And smile."

Jane went over to Jack and said, "Ahm... Is that an airplane?" She pointed up and smiled. Albert moved towards Jack, and he was just about to reach out and take the phone from the pocket of his jacket when Jack turned around.

"It's an airplane alright," Albert said.

He wondered what they could do to make Jane more of a distraction. He thought about make-up, or doing something with her hair, but he ruled them out because there was too much work to be done. And then he came up with the perfect idea: get Jack very, very drunk.

There was a pub down the road, and Albert suggested that they go there for a few drinks. After three rounds, Albert made another attempt to get the phone. The phone was still in the jacket, which was hanging on the back of Jack's chair. Jane was listening to him talk about someone he knows who can slam a car door on his own head as often as he wants, and she was smiling a lot. Albert moved towards the chair as quietly as he could, but Jack noticed him.

He made another attempt a few drinks later. Jack was starting to slur his words, but he still noticed Albert.

Albert went back to Lisa, who was standing near the bar. He said to her, "This is useless. I knew Jane wouldn't work as a distraction. He'd be more distracted by the barman. Even a very ugly barman would be more of a distraction."

"That's not fair," Lisa said. "Jane is very pretty."

"We'll see about that," Albert said as he got out his phone. He dialled Jack's number, and when Jack answered he said, "Can I speak to the woman who looks like an ugly barman?"

Jack passed the phone to Jane and said, "It's for you."

Instead of saying 'I told you so' to Lisa, he said, "Run, Jane. Run!" into the phone.

She stood up and as she was running towards the door she said to Jack, "I've got your phone."

They all followed her outside. The chase came to an end in a field near Isobel's house, when Jack was too tired to run any further. Albert and Jane found it very funny, but he stopped laughing when Lisa gave Jane a stick and said, "You'll need this to hit Albert. He asked to speak to the woman who looked like an ugly barman."

Albert was getting ready to run away when Jack said, "I thought you asked to speak to the woman who looks like Ingrid Bergman."

Jane said, "You think I look like Ingrid Bergman?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "I mean, Ingrid Bergman when she was young. Not now."

"That's really nice of you to say," she said and giggled.

"Well it's true. And not just in terms of looks. I always thought, ow!"

Jack had been too distracted by Jane to notice Isobel take the stick from Jane's hand. She aimed for his knee. She managed to hit his knee several times, even as she was chasing him through the fields.

The moose's head over the fireplace has looked disappointed with me for the past few days. The wife's uncle called around and told a story about playing tennis with a broken neck. I told him about how in my rugby-playing days I once kicked a drop-goal with a squirrel clinging to my leg. I think the moose's head is disappointed with me for making up that story, but he'd probably be more disappointed if he knew the whole truth.