Gravity

It was another nice Christmas this year. All the usual things - lots of relatives around for dinner and so forth. We all went for a walk in the gardens after dinner. The wife's niece was wearing antlers with lights that flashed on and off, and they kept her occupied for hours. It was the wife who came up with that idea after seeing the way the moose's head over the fireplace was fascinated by the tinsel in his antlers.

My cousin Rachel once went to a fortune teller, who told her, "A man will fall in love with you after seeing your photograph, and a sheep in a hat will ignore a plastic flower."

When she got home she tried to find a good photo of herself, but the best one was of her laughing at a dog who'd fallen out of a box. The worst one was of her running away from the dog. So she asked her sister, June, to take another photo, and she was very careful in her choice of background. And foreground too. She wore a green dress, and she stood in the garden, looking off into the distance.

She was delighted with the photo. It was much better than any of the others, but then she noticed a dog in the background, and the dog had one paw in the air. She had wanted to avoid another photo with a dog, especially one of a dog with a paw in the air. When she showed it to people, they thought the dog looked disoriented, and no one said a word about how good she looked.

The weather forecast predicted a heavy snowfall, and she thought the snow would be the perfect backdrop for a photo of her. When she woke in the morning she looked out the window, and the land for as far as she could see was white. June called over with her kids, Daisy and Graham, and they walked around the fields, looking for the best setting for the photo.

The kids got into a discussion on gravity after Graham wondered why the snow falls slower than rain. He thought gravity must have less of an effect on snow. Daisy said that gravity has an equal effect on everything, and ever since then she'd been pointing at things and saying, "That's affected by gravity."

My cousin Hugh was out in the snow with his friends. While he was on his way down a hill on a sled, he noticed a little yellow note stuck to the sled. It said 'Don't use this sled on this hill'. "I wonder if that's about this sled and this hill," he said to himself.

Daisy was still pointing at things. "That's affected by gravity, and that's affected by gravity, and so is that." She stopped when she saw Hugh flying through the air on a sled. When he disapeared behind a tree she pointed at a gate. "And that's affected by gravity..."

Rachel thought she had found the perfect spot for her photo, but when she looked at the result on June's digital camera, she noticed Hugh flying by on a sled in the background. "Damn!" she said. "No one's going to fall in love with me after seeing a photo like that."

As they looked for another setting, they saw Hugh's friends, who were looking for Hugh. Rachel wondered if one of them would be the man who'd fall in love with her. But they had to get the photo first, and they thought they'd found the perfect setting near a tree, but there was a skier stuck in the tree. Daisy pointed at a fence post and said, "That's affected by gravity, and..." She stopped when she pointed at the tree. The two kids just stood there, looking up at the skier.

He said to Rachel and June, "I was wondering if ye could help me at all. I seem to have..."

"There's no way we can take the photo here," Rachel said.

"What about next to the stream. It's frozen over now."

"That sounds perfect."

The kids stayed at the tree as Rachel and June went to the stream. Rachel looked around to make sure there wasn't anything like a dog or an airborne cousin in the background. She saw a sheep in the snow, which was somewhere in between the two. She was ready to leave and look for another setting, but then she remembered the second part of the fortune teller's prediction, and she wondered if this would have to come true for the first part to come true too.

She went over to the sheep and put her hat on its head. "How are you going to get it to ignore a plastic flower?" June said.

"Well we'll need a plastic flower first of all."

Rachel went home and got a plastic flower. When she came back, she showed it to the sheep, but the sheep was fascinated by the flower. This was going to be more difficult than she thought, and no one would fall in love with her after seeing her trying to get a sheep to ignore a plastic flower.

She went over to the skier in the tree. The kids were still looking at him, and Daisy was pointing at him. He said to Rachel, "Ah, hello there. I was wondering if you could..."

"Could you distract anyone who comes along?" she said.

"Oh. Okay."

"Just make sure they don't look towards the sheep."

She went back to the sheep, who was still fascinated by the flower. When Hugh's friends came along, the skier started telling them about a cat with an extremely long tail he saw recently, and then he sang a song.

Rachel came to the conclusion that the sheep would only ignore the flower if there was something else to distract it. June had a bar of chocolate. Rachel held the chocolate and the flower in front of the sheep. Just one brief glance towards the chocolate would qualify as ignoring the plastic flower, but the sheep went for the flower. It ran away with the flower in its mouth, and Rachel followed it.

June had taken a photo of the sheep in the hat. She went over to Hugh's friends at the tree and said, "Does anyone want to see a photo of my sister?"

When Rachel arrived back after chasing the sheep, June said, "Where's the flower?"

"It's gone."

"Did the sheep eat it?"

"It's gone."

"She was half-right anyway." June showed her the photo of the sheep in the hat and said, "I've been showing everyone your photo. I don't know if they'll fall in love with you now. In fact, I'd be worried if they did."

Rachel didn't find it funny.

They saw a lamb walking through the snow, saying 'maaa'. "I think it's looking for its mother," June said.

It didn't seem to notice the sheep in the hat at all. "Maybe it doesn't recognise its mother because of the hat," Rachel said, and she lifted her hat off the sheep's head. The lamb got a shock the next time it looked in that direction. It said, "Maaahahahahaha," and ran over to its mother.

They looked around for another setting for the photo. June suggested going back to the frozen stream. Rachel took her hat back off the sheep, and they walked towards that.

But when they got there they noticed that the lamb had followed them all the way. "She thinks you're her mother now," June said. "Because of the hat."

June took a photo of them. When Rachel and the lamb went to look for the sheep, June went to Hugh's friends again and said, "This is a photo of my sister with her daughter."

They looked at the photo on the camera. This one was even more confusing than the last one, and none of them said anything.

Rachel couldn't find the lamb's mother, so she put the hat on a snowman, and the lamb stared at that.

She went back to June and said she was ready to give up on this mission.

"You haven't even spoken to them yet," June said. "They're not going to fall in love with you if you haven't even spoken to them."

"The fortune teller never said anything about speaking to them. She specifically mentioned a photo. That would suggest that I shouldn't talk to them at all. Which makes perfect sense."

After a lot of persuasion, June convinced her to talk to Hugh's friends. They were looking at the lamb and the snowman in the hat. One of them said, "She looked more lifelike in the photo."

Rachel went over, stood behind them and coughed to attract their attention. They turned around. They got a shock when they saw her, and they all ran away, which was more-or-less the opposite of what she was hoping for.

The lamb kept looking at the snowman. Rachel put the hat on the lamb, and it walked away.

Hugh's sled slowly came to a rest in the snow, followed closely by Hugh. He lay there for a while, and he looked at the lamb in the hat wandering aimlessly around. The lamb stood on the sled, and looked down at Hugh from beneath the hat. When the sled started moving, Hugh tried to stop it, but it was just beyond his reach.

Rachel went back to the skier in the tree. He said, "I was wondering if you could just help me out here. I seem to have..."

"I should never have listened to that fortune teller," she said. "It turned out to be a complete disaster. They seem to think that a snowman would be more believable as me than me. I wouldn't mind so much if it was a snow woman. And as for the pig... it's just a complete disaster."

One of Hugh's friends, Daniel, came over and said to her, "Sorry about the way we reacted there. You just caught us by surprise."

"That's okay. It was my fault."

"I wouldn't mind, but we actually built that snowman earlier on. It's just that when we saw it with the hat, y' know..."

"Yeah."

They saw the sled with the lamb in the hat sliding down the hill towards them. "And I think we made that as well," Daniel said.

The sled came to a stop near the tree. When the lamb jumped off, Daniel screamed and ran away, but Rachel called after him, "No, look, it's just a lamb."

He laughed when he realised his mistake. "I'm very sorry about that," he said. "Is it yours?"

"The hat is mine. The lamb is hers." Rachel pointed at the ewe. When she removed the hat, the lamb ran over to its mother.

"We're going for a drink in the pub to warm up," Daniel said, "if you'd like to come along."

"I'd love to," Rachel said.

As they walked away, the skier in the tree said, "Awww... If you could just... hello... Damn."

He looked down at Daisy and Graham, who were still looking up at him. He said, "Is there any chance at all that ye might just... y' know... no, it doesn't matter."

Daisy finally stopped pointing at him, and a few seconds later they both walked away from the tree.

The skier was alone again. He sighed, and then he listened for the sound of voices, but he heard nothing at all in the snow-covered land. Until he heard the sound of the branch breaking, and the snow-covered land was approaching very quickly.

"And so is that," Daisy said.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed Christmas, despite being constantly annoyed by the wife's grandmother. Her hearing isn't the best, and every time I said something intelligent, she looked at the moose's head and said, "What?" And most of what I said was intelligent. Although she did look at me when I said the dog was lost in someone's hat. If she'd been listening to what I'd said before it, she'd have understood what I meant, but she saying 'what?' to the moose's head then.

Santa's Igloo

I walked to the end of the garden as the light faded, and I looked out over the fields. I could see the lights and Christmas lights coming on in houses miles away. If I was miles away in the other direction I'd still see them. We haven't gone overboard with the decorations. There's a glowing Santa in the garden. The dog likes to look at it, and it's only there to distract him from the reindeer. He likes to sit in the sleigh and bark at them, which becomes annoying after about ten minutes.

My Aunt Joyce helped organise a Christmas pageant for the local kids. She was responsible for Santa's grotto, and she got my cousin Ronan to work as an elf. He didn't have much choice in the matter because his mother said he'd do it before he was even asked. He didn't like the elf costume, and he often complained about the fact that Santa was living in an igloo. "Eskimos live in igloos," he said to Aunt Joyce. "Can you imagine Santa running the biggest toy company on the planet when he lives in an igloo?"

"Well Santa is just like an Eskimo. He wears a fur coat and he gets reindeer to pull his sled instead of dogs."

"Eskimos probably kill animals to make their coats. What animal did Santa kill to make his bright red coat? Bright red animals wouldn't last long in the snow."

"He lives in Lappland. There tends to be a lot of snow and ice in that part of the world. So it's not all that unbelievable that Santa should live in an igloo. It's much more unbelievable that he'd employ you as an elf."

"They have houses in Lappland too. I've seen it on TV. Every kid would have seen Santa sitting next to his fireplace, smoking his pipe."

"Just get in the bloody igloo and hand out the toys."

She asked my cousin Hector to be Santa. He had just started his Christmas holidays, and his boss had given all of the employees a diary for the coming year. Hector was looking forward to an evening in the pub to celebrate the start of the holidays, and he decided to write the word 'pub' into every day of the diary, but he got tired of writing it after the first few pages, and he just tore out the remaining pages. He showed it to his wife, Liz, and she asked about the missing pages. He said, "I won't be able to remember the rest of the year after what I do in those first few days."

"What exactly are you planning to do in the pub?"

"I don't know... Drink, I suppose."

Joyce called around with the Santa suit in the afternoon, and Liz showed her the diary. Joyce thought it might be advisable to ask someone else to be Santa.

She stood in the back garden with Liz. In the field behind the garden, a man in a poncho ran after a sombrero as it blew away on the wind. Then a group of men in ponchos and sombreros ran by.

"Were they the Mexicans?" Joyce said to Liz.

"Yeah."

A local man called Greg agreed to take the role of Santa. He was a friend of my cousin Jane, who was always looking for an excuse to spend time in his company.

Jane's friend, Claudia, had a small battery-operated keyboard. When Jane was putting up the Christmas decorations one day, Claudia arrived with the keyboard and said, "I wrote a sort of a disco theme tune for your step ladder."

She played it on her keyboard, and Jane pictured herself climbing the ladder to the music. The idea of climbing the ladder to such an energetic piece of music made her nervous. "I wish you'd written it for the table or the door," she said.

"I was going to do a rock version, but it ended up as a disco version."

"Why can't you just say it's for the door?"

"Because I wrote it for the step ladder."

"Well why couldn't you have written a relaxing piece of music for the step ladder?"

"This is just what came out when I started writing about your ladder."

Jane got out the step ladder to hang up some of the decorations, and when she put her foot on the first step, Claudia started playing the theme tune. She put her other foot on the first step too, but she was too nervous to go any further.

Claudia wrote theme tunes for other things too. The one for plugging in the kettle started off very calm and happy, but then it suddenly became dark and foreboding. After Jane heard it, her hands were shaking the next time she plugged in the kettle. Claudia also fancied Greg, and when she heard he was the new Santa, she wanted to keep Jane out of the igloo, so she wrote a very ominous theme tune for visiting Santa. It sounded a lot like the theme tune to Jaws. After Jane heard it she refused to go anywhere near Aunt Joyce's igloo.

Joyce was getting tired of arguing with Ronan about the igloo. She remembered seeing a photo of my cousin June's pet duck, Sleepy, wearing fake antlers one Christmas, so she decided to add the duck with antlers to her Christmas scene, just to annoy Ronan even more.

It did annoy him, but he knew that the sole purpose of Sleepy's presence was to annoy him, so he said nothing about it. He just looked for a way to annoy her in return, and when he was visiting Hector he saw the perfect way to do it. Hector's twin daughters, Alice and Grace, had been learning about World War One in school. Their teacher tried to explain it by getting her pupils to represent different things in the war. She said, "Let's say Henrietta is the Somme and Sarah... Sarah can be a soldier."

"Am I the river or the battle?" Henrietta said.

"You're... Let's say you're the river and Sarah is the battle, and Daniel... Daniel is a tank... No, let's start again..."

She confused herself as much as her class, and in the end she just randomly chose people to represent things like trees or barbed wire, and she left it at that.

When Alice came home from school she said, "I'm snow."

"And I'm a trench," Grace said.

Ronan brought the twins and some of their class mates to Santa's igloo. He said to Joyce, "This fake snow looks very fake, and I was wondering what we could do to make it more life-like. So Alice is here to represent the snow."

Alice moved her fingers about a bit, because she thought this would make her look more like snow (she thought she looked less life-like than the fake snow). "That's lovely," Joyce said.

"And I'm a trench," Grace said.

Joyce kept smiling, but Ronan knew it was forced. The smile became more strained as the other kids told her they represented things like artillery or war correspondents or the Somme.

Joyce knew she had to get back at Ronan. She remembered seeing Sleepy staring at a rake as it went back and forth. "It’s good exercise for him," June had said. Sleepy was falling asleep a lot at the igloo, so Joyce asked June to rake the fake snow. She said it was to keep Sleepy awake, but it was really just to annoy Ronan.

He was annoyed when he saw the duck staring at the rake, but he didn't show it. Instead he tried to think of what he could do in response. He remembered hearing Claudia's theme tune for going into the igloo. That seemed like the perfect addition to this scene, so he called her up and asked if she'd play. She was delighted with the chance to spend time with Santa. She said to Jane, "I'm going down to Santa's igloo to play this song, if you want to come along."

She played her ominous theme tune, and Jane said, "No thanks."

But when she got to the igloo her theme tune had changed. It was very calm and happy, and Joyce enjoyed this latest addition. She knew that Ronan was defeated, and she wanted to reinforce her victory even more. She phoned Jane and asked her to perform the rap versions of carols she did when she was young. Jane refused at first, but when Joyce mentioned that Greg was playing Santa, Jane figured out what Claudia was up to with the theme tune, and she said she'd be there within minutes.

Claudia's music became very foreboding when she saw Jane. Joyce couldn't even force a smile then, but Ronan was the happiest of all the elves. Jane asked Claudia why she was playing such a dark song for something as light and happy as meeting Santa, and Claudia said, "What's light and happy about going into an igloo to meet an old man in a beard?"

"Hmm. And who might that man be now?"

"Santa."

"Santa, hmm. And who's playing Santa here?"

"I don't know. He's wearing a beard."

Claudia's music became very calm again when Greg came out of the igloo and walked towards them, but she suddenly reverted to the dark version when Greg stood on a rake in the fake snow. The handle flew up and hit him in the face.

He took off his beard, and Jane said to Claudia, "Aha! That's why you wanted to keep me away from Santa's igloo."

Greg's nose was bleeding, and he had to go home. Ronan was delighted with this. Jane and Claudia were arguing with each other and Santa was on his way home without his beard but with a bleeding nose. There was no way Joyce could recover from this, he thought.

She had no intention of giving up. She needed to find another Santa, so she phoned Hector and asked him if he'd do it. He had just woken up after his night in the pub. His head was sore, and he had just a vague memory of the night before. He looked at his diary and saw the word 'pub' written into the first few pages, and the rest of them were missing. He didn't know what to make of that. And then Joyce called and asked if he'd be Santa. He was sure this had all happened to him before. He agreed to do it, and he remembered agreeing to play Santa on another occasion too.

After getting off the phone, he sat down at the piano and played random notes. "I'm playing Groundhog Day on the piano," he said to Liz.

"I didn't know it was a song."

"It's a song?"

"You're playing it on the piano."

Hector ran away screaming.

Joyce was waiting for over an hour before he arrived at the igloo. Liz had tracked him down in the fields and brought him there, but he was still nervous. He put on the Santa suit and went into the igloo.

Jane and Claudia were still arguing outside. Claudia said, "This is the song I wrote to represent what it's like to spend time with you." She played a very dark, depressing song.

Jane took the keyboard from her and said, "Yeah, well this is your brain." She just played random notes.

Hector heard it from inside the igloo. It sounded just like the song he had played earlier on the piano. He screamed as he ran from the igloo, and they could still hear the scream for over a minute as he ran through the fields.

One of the elves had a very broad smile. Joyce said to him, "I'm glad you're happy. The whole thing is ruined now. We've lost our Santa and our Santa suit."

"It's you're own fault for putting him in an igloo," Ronan said. "That's why he's running away. He just realised he's an Eskimo."

"If you could have just accepted the possibility that Santa might choose to meet people in an igloo, none of this would have happened. No one else had a problem with it. No one has a problem with the idea of Santa flying through the sky with his reindeer either."

"That's a different matter entirely. Flying through the sky with reindeer is part of the whole Santa thing. Igloos are part of the whole Eskimo thing. They have nothing to do with Santa. You're just confused."

"What you're saying might have more weight if you didn't look so stupid in your elf costume."

Jane and Claudia were arguing too, but June brought both disputes to an end when she said, "Look, the kids are playing football with the Mexicans, just like the Allies playing the Germans in no-man's land on Christmas day in The Great War."

There was silence as they all looked at the kids and the Mexicans. It seemed to put everything into perspective. "I'm sorry I criticised your igloo," Ronan said to Joyce. "It actually looks very good."

"I'm sorry I said you looked stupid in your elf costume."

Jane and Claudia apologised to each other too, and Joyce offered them all cigarettes.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves looking at the Christmas lights as they flash on and off on the tree. He didn't look so impressed when the wife's uncle told a story about the time he stole Christmas lights after losing a game of poker. He lost a lot of money on the game, and he suspected he'd been cheated, so he took the lights and ran. He once stole a silver jug when someone bet him he couldn't go around the world in eighty days.

Christmas Carols

The garden can be very quiet in the mornings, when the grass is covered in frost and the dog is still asleep. My great-grandfather used to say that the garden was haunted. That's probably just something he used to say to keep people out of the place. He once said that a bottle of brandy was haunted too. He took it into the garden.

My cousin June's kids, Daisy and Graham, got Christmas presents from their father's sister in America. Daisy got a toy Indian and Graham got a cowboy, but the cowboy's eyes were always closed. Daisy said, "Is he asleep or is he dead?"

"He'd hardly be dead," Graham said.

"I think he's probably dead. If you get a cowboy and an Indian together, one of them is going to be dead and the other is going to be alive. And the Indian is obviously alive. Look." Daisy held up the Indian.

This was two weeks before Christmas, and at about this time, a neighbour of theirs called Neil was trying to organise an afternoon of carol singing in the park. He had asked the new church choir if they'd take part, but he regretted this decision when he heard them perform. They'd only been singing together for a week, and the only thing they could think of doing was singing 'Rambo' over and over again, which they did.

Neil was looking for a replacement act, and June suggested her cousin Craig's new brass band. There were only four people in the band, and they all wanted to play the tuba, but four tubas seemed better than a choir singing 'Rambo' over and over again.

He doubted this when he heard them play. There was a very strange rhythm to their music, but at least there was a recognisable tune and no suggestion of Rambo, so he decided to use them instead of the choir.

Graham's cowboy still hadn't opened his eyes after a few days. The kids often used to listen to the conversations of cows in the fields behind their house. They'd look back and forth as the cows mooed at each other, and they'd say things like, "That one just bought a new radiator." They went out to the cows with the cowboy and the Indian, and after listening to them for a while, Daisy said, "They're all saying that the cowboy is dead. They're glad the cowboy is dead."

"He's not dead," Graham said as he held the cowboy up for the cows to see. "He's just sleeping. Look."

The cows looked at the cowboy, but they didn't react.

The kids went with their mother to see Craig's brass band practise the carols. They listened to one of Craig's friends play a solo, and then Daisy said, "He just said that the cowboy is dead too."

Then another member of the band played a solo, and Graham said, "Well he said that the Indian is an idiot."

June didn't believe that the tuba players were saying anything about dead cowboys and stupid Indians, but she did get the impression that they were communicating with each other through their music. And then she realised that it sounded just like Morse code. She phoned a friend of hers called Becky who knew Morse, and she asked her to come down to listen to the band.

The band had been communicating with each other in Morse for the previous few weeks, ever since they were at a party, and one of them, Kenny, convinced his girlfriend to sing a song. No one said anything about her singing ability after the song. When they met up for a rehearsal on the following day, no one said a word about anything at all. They had all learnt Morse code in the boy scouts, and Bill started playing in Morse on the tuba. The others translated it as: 'She should try to master talking first'.

Craig picked up his tuba and played in Morse: 'He's got a point there'.

Then Kenny used his tuba to say to Bill: 'Yeah well your last girlfriend thought a xylophone was a wrestler'.

They continued communicating through the tubas, and they never said a word about Francine, Kenny's girlfriend, when they stopped playing. Most of the tunes that Bill and Craig played were about Francine, and Kenny always responded to those. The fourth member of the group, Shane, tried to be the peace maker. He played things like 'there's no need for that'.

Becky listened to them play during the reahearsal for the carols, and Neil asked her what they were saying. Bill had just suggested that Francine will do almost anything when she's drunk. Becky didn't want to repeat what he said, especially not in front of the kids. She said, "Ahm... They're just saying 'Rambo' over and over again."

Neil shook his head at them, but they were still better than the choir because no one would know what they were playing.

The choir were angry when they heard that the tuba players were just playing 'Rambo' over and over again. They had been dropped for doing just that, but they were determined to regain their place. They turned up at a rehearsal in the park on the morning of the performance. They told Neil that they'd put a lot of work in, and now they could sing 'laissez-faire' as well as 'Rambo'. He let them sing, and he was impressed when they sang 'laissez-faire' over and over again. He thought this would be better than the four tuba players, but for the chorus they just sang 'Rambo' again, and he decided to stick with the brass band.

The choir stayed to listen to the band. Becky was there to translate, and the choir shook their heads and clicked their tongues when she said they were just saying 'Rambo', but then Daisy said to her, "Didn't he just say that the dead cowboy is dead?"

"That's right," Becky said. "He said that the dead cowboy is dead."

Bill played another piece. Becky said, "And he said that the dead cowboy doesn't like the Indian anymore, because he's dead now."

Becky continued interpreting their statements in terms of the dead cowboy and the Indian.

Kenny was saying something about one of Bill's former girlfriends as the rehearsal came to an end. Becky was translating it as: "He'd rather look at the dead cowboy than her..."

At that moment, a bird was flying past Kenny, and nearby someone shouted at a dog who was running away with a hat. The bird looked to the side, and Kenny turned in that direction too. The bird flew into his tuba and got stuck there. Kenny blew as hard as he could, trying to finish his statement and get the bird out, and eventually it fell out and flew away. Kenny finished the note.

"Shoulders," Becky said.

Neil wondered if he should use the choir after all, but the chances of that happening again seemed unlikely, so he stuck with the brass band.

The choir turned up for the performance that afternoon, and they told Neil that they'd been practising over the past few hours and they had come up with something just as good or even better than the brass band, but he told them it was too late to change now.

A big crowd had gathered for the performance. The band started playing, and they were still communicating in Morse, but when Kenny tried to respond to a comment about Francine, no sound came from his tuba. He blew as hard as he could, but something seemed to be blocking it. June said to Graham, "Is that the dead cowboy?"

Graham smiled and nodded.

Kenny was on the point of collapse when the cowboy came out of the tuba. Graham went over to pick it up, and the cowboy's eyes were open. "He's alive!" Graham said. Then he turned to Kenny and said, "You were just as wrong as the cow."

Then Bill played the following line on his tuba: 'I didn't know Francine had an opinion on it too'.

Kenny finally lost his temper. He attacked Bill, and Craig joined in too. Shane tried to calm things down, but all four of them were still holding their tubas, and it looked as if all four were fighting.

Neil moved them out of the way, and he got the choir to take their places. They started singing, and they had moved a long way beyond just repeating 'Rambo' or 'laissez-faire' over and over. They sang: "The dead cowboy is dead and..."

But they stopped when Graham stood up and said, "He's not dead. He's alive. Look." Graham got the cowboy to nod a few times, and his eyes opened and closed.

The choir just looked at each other. There was a few seconds of silence, and then they started singing, "Ram-bo, Ram-bo, Rambo Rambo, Rambo..."

Neil wondered if he should bring back the fighting tuba players. Most people were looking at them already, and the choir singing 'Rambo' did seem like an appropriate accompaniment to the fighting. It was more appropriate than the carols anyway. So Neil left it as it was, and everyone there enjoyed the performance.

The moose's head over the fireplace likes this time of year, when we start to put up the Christmas decorations. He loves the tinsel on his antlers - I think it keeps him occupied. I don't know how the surprised hen is going to react when it sees the turkey. Well no, actually I know exactly how it's going to react.

Snow White

I was out in the garden, watching the dog walk across the lawn. He stopped suddenly, as if he was trying to listen to a sound. I recently acquired a megaphone, so I used that to tell the dog there was a horse just behind him, but he just stared back at me.

My cousin Rachel was learning to play the violin. She practised every day, but not everyone appreciated her efforts. Her mother, Aunt Bridget, had a party one Friday evening, and Rachel played a song at that. She got a round of applause at the end, but when she picked up her violin to practice on the following day, there was a fork stuck to the back of it. She met her sister, June, later that day, and she said, "Someone stuck a fork to my violin."

"To your violin?"

"Yeah, someone glued a fork to my violin."

"Are you sure someone didn't stick a fork into your violin?"

"Yeah, it's definitely glued to the back of it. I've no idea who could have done it."

"Lots of people could have done it if the fork was rammed into your violin. Are you sure the fork is glued to it?"

"Yeah. But I'm going to find out who did it. This is going to take a bit of detective work. Detective work led by intuition."

They walked around the house looking for clues, and they came across nothing unusual until they looked under the stairs. There were match sticks on the floor.

"What's your intuition telling you?" June said.

"I can't help thinking this has something to do with an affair."

"I don't see that at all."

"They were in there, and they were having an affair, whoever they were, and they dropped their match sticks."

"How can you infer an affair from match sticks?"

"They were lighting matches to see each other. Whereas if they'd been married for years, or if they'd been going out for a long time, they wouldn't want to see each other at all."

June couldn't find a flaw in that logic. She noticed a shovel under the stairs too and she said, "How do you explain that?"

"I don't know about the shovel, but it probably ties into the affair in some way."

Their brohter, Ronan, was a member of an Amateur Dramatics Society, and they were due to perform a musical version of Snow White. A woman called Brenda and her friend, Nigella, auditioned for the part of Snow White. Nigella was a ballet dancer, and she was hoping that her dancing skills would help her get the part. Brenda was the better singer, and she got to play Snow White, but she insisted that a part be created just for Nigella. The director agreed to let her make a brief all-dancing appearance as Snow White's cousin who pays a visit. She'd dance to a song with her boyfriend and then leave.

She hadn't consulted her boyfriend when she agreed to take the role. He was speechless when she told him he'd be in it too - speechless with delight, she thought. But the next she heard from him was a text message on the following day which said: 'I'm leaving the country. Goodbye.'

Ronan was also learning how learning how to draw and paint at the time. Jessica, his cousin, is an art teacher. She gave him a few lessons, and then he joined her art class with a friend of his, Fred. One day the class had to draw a scene that consisted of a man sitting on a chair, smoking a cigar, and a rugby player looking into the distance. A balloon was stuck to the rugby player's head. He looked a bit dazed, as if he'd just been in a tough game, and he didn't seem to notice that the balloon was stuck to his head.

Ronan drew the scene, but he left out the balloon. He wondered if he should add it in at the end. He looked around at what the others were doing, and they had all left out the balloon too. Each of them seemed to be waiting for someone else to draw the balloon first, but no one did.

Jessica didn't know if she should mention it either. She looked back and forth between the drawings and the rugby player. She said to the class, "Are ye sure ye've drawn everything in the scene?"

No one said anything. "Okay so," Jessica said. "I think ye've all done a really, really good job."

Aunt Bridget's party was that evening, and she invited Jessica and the rest of the art class along because she thought it would be nice to have drawings of the evening instead of just photos. Fred was very eager to go when he heard that Brenda would be there - she had just come back from a holiday. He liked Brenda, and drawing her was the perfect excuse to stare at her for long periods of time.

Nigella was there too. She had been depressed since her boyfriend left, and she pulled out of the musical because she couldn't find a partner. Fred said to her, "Why don't you dance with a shovel? I once saw that in a film - someone dancing with a shovel."

Tears welled up in her eyes. Ronan said he'd get her a drink, and as he went to get it he wondered how long it would take to get a ballet dancer drunk. He mentioned it to Fred, and Fred suggested placing a wager on it. Ronan thought it would take less than an hour and Fred said it would take more. They agreed that the point at which they could say she's drunk would be when she agrees to dance with a shovel.

When they weren't filling up her glass, they were drawing scenes from the party with the rest of the class. Jessica suggested drawing Daisy, June's daughter, who had a plate with a piece of cake in her hand. Ronan asked her to hold out her other arm, and all of the class drew a balloon on a piece of string in this hand. It seemed to cancel out the balloon they'd removed from the scene earlier in the day.

It took forty-two minutes for Nigella to agree to dance with a shovel. It took another two minutes for her to actually dance with a shovel. Ronan went to the shed to get one. The class drew her as she danced, but they all felt guilty about drawing the shovel, so they left that out.

Ronan put the shovel under the stairs when she finished her dance. The drawings looked very bare with just the ballet dancer on her own, so they decided to add in a human partner. They chose Fred to be the model for this, and he was reluctant at first, but then he agreed after Ronan told him he wouldn't have to pay the twenty quid for losing the bet if he posed for the drawing. He also posed with Brenda later on, but they all drew a shovel in his place.

Nigella didn't say much for the rest of the evening, but then after midnight she asked Ronan and Fred if she'd been dancing earlier.

"You were," Ronan said. "And you were very good too."

"But who was I dancing with?"

"Fred. And he was very good as well."

Ronan showed her the drawing. Fred looked very happy in it, probably because he'd just avoided paying twenty quid to Ronan. Nigella smiled at it. She said to Fred, "Does this mean you'll dance with me in the show?"

"I..." Fred didn't know how to say 'no', and she took it as a yes. When she suggested that they keep seeing each other after the show he knew that 'no' was the only appropriate response, but he could only manage an 'I' again, and she took this to mean 'I'd love to'.

She was happy and he was depressed then, but not depressed enough to miss another chance to draw Brenda at the rehearsal on the following day. She came back from her holiday with a tan, and when she showed up at the rehearsal, the director said to her, "How can you possibly play Snow White when you're not even white?"

"Yeah well the dwarves aren't exactly dwarves either."

The director had chosen the smallest men in the group to play the dwarves, but he only had eight to choose from. He tried to think of some rejoinder to this line, and half an hour later, he was ready to deliver his response. He decided to get balloons to play the dwarves instead. He blew up seven balloons and drew faces on them. He put them on the stage.

This confused the art class when they arrived in the hall. Jessica got them to draw the scene, but they all left out the balloons. Ronan started drawing seven shovels instead, and the others copied him, apart from Fred. He drew himself and Brenda dancing on the stage.

When Brenda saw the stage, the director said to her, "You're right. They're not dwarves. They're balloons."

He smiled because he thought he'd won, but half an hour later she looked at the drawings and said, "They're not balloons. They're shovels. Look."

She showed him Ronan's drawing. He didn't know what to say to this, but it had taken her half an hour to come up with her response, so he had plenty time to get seven shovels.

Rachel was coming to the end of her investigations around the house. The only clues she had found were the match sticks and the shovel. She went to the hall with June, and she looked through Ronan's sketch book. She saw the one of Nigella dancing with Fred, Daisy with the cake and the balloon, and then Brenda standing next to a shovel. She knew there was something odd about all three of these drawings, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Brenda and the director were arguing as she looked through the sketch book. The director had replaced the seven balloons with seven shovels. He said to her, "You're right. They're shovels."

"Do you even know what dwarves are?" she said.

"They're small people."

"Yeah, but who's playing them? Is it shovels or balloons?"

"It's..."

"You don't even know."

"I know what's going on here," Rachel said, with a look on her face as if she knew what was going on there. "My initial intuition proved correct. An affair is at the heart of this. Fred is having an affair with Brenda."

"Yes!" Fred said, thinking that his drawing had come true. Then he noticed that Nigella looked shocked so he said, "I mean, no." Then he remembered that 'no' was the perfect response to get out of the show and dating Nigella last night, but today it's the other way around, so he said, "I mean..."

"I noticed a few alterations to the drawings," Rachel said. "Nigella danced with a shovel last night, but in the drawing she's dancing with Fred. And then when Fred posed with Brenda, he was replaced by a shovel. Fred didn't want Nigella to see him spending time with Brenda, so he used a shovel to take his place in the drawings, and a shovel took his place in the dance while he was under the stairs with Brenda, having an affair."

Fred could only smile at that thought. Brenda was too confused to say anything.

Rachel said, "Fred was worried that Nigella would figure out that the man represented by the shovel was having an affair with Brenda, so he replaced all of the dwarves with shovels to make it look as if any one of them could be that man."

The director was fairly sure that he had replaced the dwarves with shovels, but Rachel's reason seemed like a much better explanation.

"Which just leaves the fork stuck to my violin," Rachel said to Ronan. "I knew there was something wrong with the drawing of Daisy holding a balloon. There were no balloons at the party. She was holding a plate with a piece of cake in her right hand, and in her left hand she was really holding a fork to eat the cake, not a balloon at all. You took out the fork and replaced it with a balloon. You needed somewhere to put the fork, so you stuck it to my violin."

"To your violin?" He could vaguely remember doing something to her violin with a fork. He was drunk at the time. "I was drunk," he said.

"So was I," Fred said to Nigella.

Nigella had been more drunk than anyone and she couldn't remember what happened at all, but she was still upset.

Brenda looked confused. She said, "I can't remember any of this."

The director said to her, "How can you accuse me of not knowing who's playing the dwarves when you don't even know who you're having an affair with?"

"There's a balloon stuck to your head," Brenda said. The director looked dejected. He knew he'd never think of a response to that.

The moose's head over the fireplace is finding it difficult to stay awake now that we've started lighting the fire again. I tried using the megaphone to keep him awake. I told him there was a horse behind him, but he just stared back at me too. The wife's uncle left the megaphone here. He says he got it from a former girlfriend. He once told her she was too loud, and she never said another word to him until she got the megaphone and said, "What did you say?" He wouldn't tell us how he had got it from her. I know exactly how the wife got it from me. She buried it in the garden and blamed it on the dog.