Two Thousand Birthday Cards

We've had too much rain recently to be able to do much in the garden. The wife has spent a lot of time positioning some stones she found. She thought they looked interesting, so she put them in a flowerbed. Each of them looks interesting on their own (I'll have to take her word for that) but finding the right position in relation to each other is proving tricky. In a pile somewhere out of the way is where I would have chosen to position them. She obviously has some idea in her mind, some vision of the effect she's trying to create. It was just like this when she was choosing the colour of the dog's kennel. She went for red, but when it rained the colour seemed all wrong. The dog looks sad in his kennel in the rain. That's why I thought the colour looked wrong -- because the dog was in it and he looked sad. I told her this and she said, "That's just the difference between you and me." I'd have said, "I'd have said 'you and I'," but if I'd said it I'd have had to go out to the shed. And I might have been happy with that -- I don't know.

My cousin Chloe was in the glasshouse one afternoon when her phone rang. It was her friend, Eve.

"At the moment I'm running down a huge corridor," Eve said. "There's a glass wall at one side, and I'm being chased by some people."

"Right. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, that's okay. Did you find your watch?"

"I did. It was in the kitchen all along. Gary found it."

"That's good. Listen, I'm approaching the exit to the building now, so I'm going to take my chances out in the open."

"It sounds very risky. Best of luck with that."

"Thanks. I might give you a call later. It all sort of depends on how I get on here."

"Yeah, I can imagine."

"I'll see you so."

"Bye Eve."

Chloe's brother, Gary, was at the race track, tearing up betting slips. He can do that with one hand and roll a cigarette with the other.

He left after the last race, and he went back into town. He met his cousin Isobel as he was walking down a street, and she said she was on the way to meet their friend Jim, if he'd like to come along. So he went to the pub with her.

Jim was standing on the street outside the pub, staring into space. They asked him what was wrong and he said, "I'm having fierce trouble with these birthday cards I bought. There's two thousand of them. It wouldn't be any trouble at all if there was just two or three, or even twenty of them, but there's two thousand."

"Why did you buy two thousand of them?" Gary said.

"I don't really know. That's the trouble. It wouldn't be any trouble at all if I said, 'Listen lads, I've no idea why I bought two thousand birthday cards,' and they said, 'That's grand so.' But they don't. They poke me in the shoulder and say, 'You'll have fierce trouble with this.'"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"That's another aspect to this trouble I'm having, fierce trouble. I don't know what I'm going to do about it. There's no way I'm paying for two thousand birthday cards."

Isobel said, "I'm sure if you just explained the situation to them rationally, they'd say, 'Okay, you made a mistake. That's okay so. You don't have to buy two thousand birthday cards.'"

"You don't know these people," Jim said.

He took them to where these people lived. It was a mansion at the edge of the town. They were in the garden. Jim, Gary and Isobel observed them through binoculars. Some of them were playing croquet, and another one was feeding a rabbit. A woman was sitting at an easel, painting a picture of all the things they'd do with the money they got from selling the birthday cards. The painting showed them buying more rabbits, and buying paintings too, jumping on trampolines and rolling around in flowers, and they had very big guns in all of these things.

"Okay, so the safest thing to do would be to find the money," Isobel said.

"How am I going to find that sort of money?"

"I know someone who made a fortune out of trees," Gary said. "It was all because he believed Elvis was living in a tree. He only believed it when he was on medication. Any one of us could do that."

Gary took them to meet Bill. He now lives with his wife, who he met at a bird-watching convention. He told her she had a bird in her hair -- it was perched on a twig. She smiled at him, and they fell in love almost straightaway. Even the bird could sense that.

They'd been married for over a year, and Bill was starting to get annoyed with his wife because every time he said, "I've come up with a name for that bird," she said, "Have you made sure it's not 'Hermann Goering'?"

He told Jim, Gary and Isobel about this when he met them, and Isobel said, "Why don't you just stop saying 'I've come up with a name for that bird' and say the name I've come up with is so-and-so, whatever the name is. As long as it's not 'Hermann Goering'."

Bill thought about this for a while, and then he said, "Get off my property."

They stood on the street outside. "Well done, Isobel," Jim said.

They were alone on the wide pavement. They watched the traffic go by and they tried to think. Isobel came up with another idea. She said, "I was talking to Chloe on the phone earlier, and she said she had just got a call from Eve. She was in trouble too -- fierce trouble, by the sound of it. She's being chased by some people. Why don't we just call her and see how she got out of it?"

Isobel phoned Eve and told her about the trouble Jim was in, but Eve said, "I'm afraid I haven't quite got out of my trouble yet. I'm on the roof of a very big house at the moment. I could tell ye how to get into trouble."

"We've already figured that bit out. It's the getting out of it we're interested in."

"Yeah. I haven't really figured that bit out yet. But as soon as I do, I'll call you and tell you how I managed to get out of it."

They stood in silence again. They tried to think, but Gary thought he heard the sound of music from somewhere. They walked down the footpath in the direction the sound was coming from. They turned the corner onto a quiet street, where a traditional band were playing. The band looked lost. They walked in one direction and stopped. Then they turned around, walked back the way they came and stopped again. They kept playing their instruments all the time.

"They look as if they need our help," Gary said. "If we could help them out, they might help us. You can make a lot of money through busking."

"Not enough to buy two thousand birthday cards."

"Maybe not, but you've got to start somewhere."

They went to the band and explained their plan. The band seemed happy at the prospect of finding their way out of the street, and they agreed to go busking, but they didn't actually say 'yes'. They just played a tune that sounded like a yes.

They went to the square in the centre of the town and the band started playing. A crowd formed around them within minutes. They got a huge round of applause at the end of each song, and they made a lot of money too.

And then at the end of one song a man said, "I was wondering if ye could help me out. I booked a band to play at a birthday party. They were supposed to turn up an hour ago, but there's still no sign of them. Could ye possibly take their place? I'll pay double what I was going to pay them."

"I'm the band's manager," Gary said. "They'd be delighted to play at the party."

"Fantastic," the man said, and he took them to the house where the party was. It was just next door to the house where they'd been spying on those people earlier. This house was a mansion too, and the party was in the garden.

The party really came to life when the band started playing. A crowd formed around them here too. Some people started dancing. Isobel got a glass of champagne and walked around the garden, looking at the flowers. She saw a big bird in a tree and she said, "Hey, Goering."

The bird turned around and looked at her. It was a very big bird. She turned around and faced the other way.

The music stopped when the band who were supposed to play finally arrived. They went over to the trad band and said, "Ye sound like ye're trying to strangle something. What are ye trying to strangle?"

The trad band played a hornpipe called 'You think Hong Kong is the thing in your mother's beard', but they only got a few bars into it before the fight started.

The fight ended a few minutes later when they fell into a fountain, and broke the statue in the centre. The water was re-directed towards the table where the birthday cake was, and the person in the birthday cake used the same words she used when someone told her that the bat landed on her head because it liked her make-up, only this time just a few people heard her because her voice was muffled by the birthday cake.

When the people from next door looked over the hedge to see what was going on, Jim, Gary and Isobel ran away, and the trad band followed. They were chased by the guests from the party and the people from next door.

They ran back into town, and when they turned a corner onto a narrow street, they came across an old pub. Gary suggested they hide in there.

Through the frosted glass on the door they saw the chasing pack run by. When they turned around they saw a sight they never expected to see in a pub. There was a little race track on the floor, and instead of horses or dogs, they were racing mice. The next race was just about to start, and a lot of betting activity was going on.

"If we put the money we got from the busking on one of the mice," Jim said, "that could go a long way to getting the money for the birthday cards."

"What do you think, Gary?" Isobel said.

Gary was looking through a form book. "Iron Dioxide beat a cat to a fence by three lengths in his last outing, and that's three cat-lengths."

"He's seven-to-one," Jim said. "Let's back him."

They put all their money on Iron Dioxide, but when the race started, he didn't even move. They shouted at him, and they pointed at the other mice, but Iron Dioxide was still at the start when the others were at the finishing line.

"Why didn't he run?" Gary said.

"He's nervous because that falcon is looking in the window at him," the barman said.

The falcon was actually looking at Isobel. She tried to ignore him.

They left the pub and stood on the pavement outside.

"We could go to the field where all the old cars are," Gary said. "We might find something valuable in them. I heard that someone left their glass eyes in the car they abandoned."

"I could go to my friend Alice," Isobel said. "She's an artist. Maybe those people would accept a painting instead of the money. They're going to spend some of the money on paintings anyway."

So Gary, Jim and the band went to look through the old cars while Isobel went to see her friend.

Alice didn't think her paintings would be worth anything. For the previous few months she'd been painting grey things. She said, "People keep saying to me, 'You didn't have to paint them grey, you know.' And I say, 'Well I did have to paint them grey if they're grey things.' No one ever said to me, 'You didn't have to paint grey things, you know.' If they'd said that, I might have said, 'That's a very good idea. I think I'll paint a red thing today.'"

"Do you think they're worth anything?"

"Nothing. The man in the art gallery says that grey is out this season."

Gary, Jim and the band were looking through the cars, but the only things they'd found were a radio and Scooby Doo toy that said 'up yours' when you pulled the string.

The band were in the back of a van when they heard voices outside. They looked out and saw those people who were selling the birthday cards. They were pointing guns at Gary and Jim. When they went into a shed, the band ran away.

As Isobel was walking away from Alice's house she saw the trad band running down the street towards her, and from the sound of their music she could tell that something was wrong.

"What is it?" she said. They played a tune. "Those people have found Gary and Jim!" They played some more. "And they're being held at gunpoint! Lead the way."

They band ran back the way they came, and Isobel followed them. They took her to the shed. She looked in the window and saw Gary and Jim inside. They had their hands in the air, and those people were pointing guns at them.

Isobel wondered what she should do. Her phone rang. It was Eve.

"Hi, Isobel," Eve said. "Do you remember earlier on when you were looking for a way to get out of trouble?"

"Yeah."

"Well I found the ideal way. I was at a waterfall, and the only way out was to jump down the waterfall and take my chances there. I looked at it and I said to myself, 'I don't fancy my chances there.' So I did the only other thing I could think of. I told them I thought there was something moving in the curtains, and they just laughed, and now we're all having tea and discussing Proust."

"And that was all there was to it?"

"That was all. I just told them about the curtains."

Isobel couldn't think of a better plan, so she went inside and said, "Hi, my name is Isobel. This whole thing with the birthday cards arose because Jim thought there was something moving in the curtains. That's how this whole thing arose. I thought so too, but I could have been wrong about that. So I think the best thing to do would be to say, 'Okay, you made a mistake. That's okay so. You don't have to buy two thousand birthday cards.' Please."

"Okay," one of them said, and they put away their guns, partly because she said 'please', but mostly because there was a falcon on her shoulder, and he was looking at them in a very menacing way.

The band play a reel called 'There's a falcon on your shoulder', but Isobel didn't know what it was called. They all danced to the music and they forgot about the birthday cards.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't believe the story of the three pigs. That might be due to the fact that the wife's niece gets it mixed up with the story of the three bears when she tells it (and there's a post office in her telling of it too), but I don't think he'd believe it anyway. The wife's uncle often tells a story of how he was offered three pigs to marry a woman on a farm where he once woke up. He says, "If it was three motorbikes, I'd have thought, 'Yeah, maybe.' But when they offer you pigs -- run for the hills when they offer you pigs." I don't know if the moose's head believes it, but he seems to enjoy it anyway.

The Chase

I've been walking around the garden a lot recently, and not just for the sake of walking around the garden. I've been asked to make a speech at a dinner-dance, and the garden is the best place to practise it. There are too many critics elsewhere. But even in the garden I'm sure I can hear laughter. And the laughter is directed at me rather than at my joke about the bishop and the phone booth. It's very funny. A friend of mine told it to me and he said it once made his aunt drop an electric sander on his foot.

My cousin Gary met a woman called Mandy at the bus stop one day, and he thought he'd met her somewhere before. He asked her if she knew him, and she said yes, even though she was obviously lying, but he was delighted because he must know Mandy too, and you're set up for life if you know Mandy because she knows so many people and she'll get you into all the best parties.

One afternoon, she took Gary along to a party in a red brick house with a drawing room, and in the drawing room she introduced him to everyone she knew, which was everyone there. Lots of conversations were going on at the same time. Lots of smoking and drinking too, but it all came to an abrubt halt when Sophie slapped Joe across the face and said, "That was Susanne's!"

Everyone looked at Joe. He put down his drink, said, "Ah. Now. The thing about it is..." And he ran away.

He left through the front door, jumped down the concrete steps to the street and ran away. Everyone from the party followed him. Gary met his cousin Ronan on the way, and Ronan's girlfriend, Audrey. They joined in the chase too.

Joe just ran around the block, and they ended up back where they started, but he had just enough time to get away in his car. Everyone else managed to find the nearest available transport. Gary and Mandy left in her friend Sue's jeep -- there were six of them in that. There were many more in a van, lots of people in lots of cars, and two on a motorbike and side-car. There was a caravan too. Ronan and Audrey were in Audrey's car.

Gary enjoyed listening to Mandy, and she never stopped talking. "Ann is so good at drawing faces. I mean with me I look at them and say, 'Do I really look like that with a cocktail?' And everyone else says, 'Mandy, you know, you look exactly like that.' So, you know, I have to just say, 'Do I? Hmm.' And it is quite funny, of course. And when I see her draw other people I say, 'Good on you, Ann girl. That's spot on. That's exactly what they look like.' It's a gift -- that's what I tell her. A pure gift."

The chase entered the countryside. They drove down narrow twisting roads, up and down hills. The man in the side-car was playing a tuba. Joe decided to go cross-country when he couldn't lose them on the roads.

A sci-fi film was being shot in a field. People were pointing up at a space craft that was hanging from a tree on a piece of string. They kept pointing up when Joe and the chasing pack went by in front of them.

"Let's follow them," the director said to his assistant. "This could be even better than our film about the Martians and the pig."

"I doubt it."

They joined the chase too.

Joe went over a very narrow stone bridge that didn't look as if it would take the weight of his car, but it just about did. Some of the chasing pack decided to go across the water. Three of them nearly made it to the other side in an old bath, but they forgot to put the plug hole in. The caravan made it across.

Denise was playing tennis with her friend Jane. She jumped at every shot. She jumped as high as she'd ever jumped before for a smash, but she missed the ball because she was distracted by Joe's car going across the court. It was followed by various other cars, jeeps, a caravan and the motorbike with the side-car, and then the people from the film.

Denise went to the old payphone on a wooden post at the side of the court. She picked up the receiver and said, "Are you really the FBI?"

"Ah, yes," a man in a shed said into a paper cup on a piece of string.

"Well I have something you'll almost definitely want to investigate."

Ronan and Audrey were left behind when they got a flat tyre. Ronan went to change the wheel, but the spare was missing. "What happened to the spare wheel?" he said to Audrey.

"I gave it to an orphan. He really wanted it."

No cars passed by. They walked down the road, and after half a mile they came to a house. They met a man in the garden, and they asked if he could give them directions to the nearest town or village.

"I'll be driving to the village in about ten minutes," he said, "if ye'd like to come along."

"That would really help us out," Audrey said.

He lit his pipe and said, "This is all there is, I'm afraid. This house. This is all. There nearly was something more once." He pointed at a man with a tie and pens in the pocket of his shirt. He was staring into the distance. "Do you believe him?" the man with the pipe said.

Ronan and Audrey looked around and avoided making eye contact because they didn't know how to answer that question.

When the man with the pipe went to get his car keys, Audrey said hello to the man with the tie and the pens.

"I wouldn't believe me if I were you," he said.

"We do believe you," Audrey said. "Don't we, Ronan?"

"Ah, yeah," Ronan said.

"And we believe in you," Audrey said.

"Really?"

"Yeah. You've definitely got what it takes."

"That's just the thing. I'm fairly sure I don't have what it takes to do anything. Except wearing a tie, holding pens in my pocket and listening to people say, 'I don't believe you. And I don't believe in you either.' That's the life for me. That's all there is."

"Don't say that," Audrey said. "You can be anything you want to be. And I'm not just saying that. You can be anything."

"Anything?"

"You can be anything you want to be." She nodded.

Denise thought it was very exciting to be part of the chase. She drove, and her friends were in the back seat. The 'FBI' man was in the passenger's seat. They listened to him talk about his work, but he didn't say much. He was glad when he saw that the chasing pack had all stopped in a field because they'd lost Joe. Denise stopped there too.

Jennifer stood in the shade of a tree and she remembered talking to Joe earlier when he told her about the race he ran in that morning, and at the time she said she'd love to see the photos of it.

She mentioned this to Mandy, who said, "Really? He never said a word to me about it. But you know, people are always saying things to me, and I'm genuinely absolutely interested in what they say but somehow they slip through the seive and end up in my feet because there are just so many things I'm genuinely absolutely interested in. And people say, 'I'm sure I told you about that, Mandy.' And I say, 'Well you know you quite probably did and there's a fair chance it ended up in my shoes with my feet.' God knows what's down there with my feet."

The people from the film walked by in front of them, holding model space crafts, kitchen utensils, lots of chrome things and some hats.

"Did you remember all of those things?" Jennifer said to Mandy.

"No, I was just thinking about Joe in the race."

They found a tourist centre at the top of a hill. Gary went to the information desk and said, "I was wondering if you could tell me any more about this chase."

They gave him a brochure, but that just had pictures of places on the chase route and people in side-cars with nervous smiles.

They stood on the hill outside and the narrator of the sci-fi film said, "So this is what we've come to. All our shiny chrome things, all our wonderful buzzing technology, and where does it lead us to? Standing on a hill, looking at photos of nervous people in side-cars. Typical."

Maggie walked alone through the fields. She stopped to look up at a tree, with a looking-up-longingly song playing in her mind, and then she sat on the banks of a small stream. She walked back to the gate, and she smiled when she heard the happy chase music played by the man in the side-car.

A jeep stopped. Mandy rolled down the window and said, "Would you like to join us on our chase? We thought the whole thing was off for a while, but the whole thing is back on again now, and we thought maybe you'd like to join us."

"Okay."

It was a tight squeeze in the jeep, but she just about managed to fit in next to Gary.

Joe drove up the driveway of an old country manor. When the others arrived at the house they saw his car parked in the front, but no sign of Joe.

The front door was open and they went inside. Mandy moved all around the drawing room in the space of a few seconds, looking at the furniture, getting lost in the curtains, spinning around. "And y' know, it's really like this pretty much all the time now because my neck is so much better since I started going to that man, so I can do all sorts of things when before I'd have said, 'Wait a minute, Mandy. What about your neck?' So it's fantastic really." Someone poured her a drink and she took a sip of that. "And I really like these long days because you can fit so much into them, all sorts of chases and things where you say, 'Look at that. Isn't that amazing. Have you ever seen anything as amazing as that?' And I can do all of these things now because of my neck."

They walked around the house and looked at all of the portraits, but there was more than just a family resemblance between all the faces. It looked as if it was the same woman with different facial expressions and costumes, and in a few of them she was posing as a man.

They stood in silence in front of a portrait on the stairs. "It's funny how everything is so quiet now," Denise said. "Time seems to slow down."

"I did that," the narrator of the film said.

"Well make time speed up again."

He looked around, wondering what he could do. He went down to the hall and pushed an ashtray off a table, and they all looked around for signs of time speeding up again.

Gary got separated from the others in his search for Joe. He went down an old stairs with a bare carpet, and he walked quietly down a dark, narrow corridor. He stopped when he heard footsteps, but they stopped too.

He walked on again, and when he turned the corner he bumped into Maggie. They both screamed until they realised who they had bumped into, and then they smiled. When they heard an ominous buzzing sound they fell into each other's arms.

The others were still on the stairs, waiting for a sign that time had sped up. "If anything, time has stopped moving completely," Denise said. "There's only one man here who can sort all this out, and that's why I brought him along."

They all looked at the 'FBI' man.

"My investigations are nearing their completion," he said. "I just have to go upstairs for a while."

They followed him up the stairs.

Gary tip-toed down a corridor in the servant's quarters, with Maggie right behind him. He turned the corner and came face to face with one of the Martians from the film, who was holding a Martian gun. Gary picked up a table lamp to use as a weapon, and the Martian ran away. Maggie said to Gary, "Kiss me, you fool."

He really wanted to hit the Martian with the table lamp, but he really, really wanted to kiss her. He got out a pen and paper and worked it out, and yes, there was one more 'really' in the 'kiss her, you fool' column. He put the paper and pen away and finally kissed her (she had remained in her 'kiss me, you fool' pose all along).

Most of the others were in a room over the front door. The 'FBI' man was pacing from one wall to the other. He stopped at the window and turned around, and it looked as if he was about to say something, but he just paced to the other end of the room.

Mandy heard voices through the open window. She closed her eyes and imagined Joe in a race with all of the chrome things she saw earlier.

The man with the tuba played a very slow song on the violin. Ann sat near the window and worked on a drawing.

Gary and Maggie made it back to the main hall. The Martian was standing at the open door, and he froze when he saw Gary. Gary stopped too. He saw a table lamp on a table. He looked back and forth between the table lamp and the Martian. He got out the pen and paper again, and he worked it out. There was one more lightbulb in the 'it's a table lamp, you fool' column, so he picked it up and chased the Martian.

The 'FBI' man finally broke his silence in the room above. "I think I can solve this now," he said. "Yes, it is the same person in all of the paintings. And yes, that person is a woman. And that woman is you."

He pointed at Mandy.

"Well yes, you know, guilty as charged," Mandy said. "This man just asked me to pose for some paintings, and I said to myself, 'Wait a minute, Mandy, remember the last time this happened.' But no, it was fine. He asked me to wear a fake beard, which was so much fun. Of course they're not as spot on as Ann's drawings, but no one is quite as spot on as Ann."

Ann smiled and held up a drawing she did of Mandy talking to a dog.

"Spot on, Ann," Mandy said. "Spot on."

Denise kissed the FBI man on the cheek and said, "I knew you'd solve it."

He nodded. "Yes," he said. He backed away slowly, and then he ran from the room. They could hear his footsteps on the stairs. They went to the balcony to see him run out the front door. He didn't know which way to go at first. Then Joe appeared from around the side of the building, closely followed by about twenty others, including the Martian, Gary and Maggie. The FBI man ran down the driveway.

Everyone on the balcony cheered as Bill gained on Joe. The cheer got louder when Bill ran past him and dipped at the finishing line. They all stopped and the crowd applauded Bill. He was presented with a trophy.

"You get nothing for finishing second," Jennifer said to Joe. "And it serves you right for... why were we chasing you again?"

"Because..."

Mandy from the balcony said, "It had something to do with the paintings, but that's all sorted out now. It was actually me in the paintings. Sorry. I met this terribly nice man and he told me I was just the sort of person he was looking for to pose for some paintings. The right shape and all that. He was so nice and I'd have just felt terrible if I let him down, and, you know, it turned out to be so much fun in the end."

The director of the film said, "Is there any chance we could get a pig into this? Because we have a pig."

Time seemed to slow down again as they stood there and thought about the pig, the shadows of the trees creeping across the vast lawns.

Then Audrey and Ronan appeared from around the side of the house. They were running towards Joe. "Get him!" Audrey shouted, and the chase started once more. The man with the tie and the pens was following Ronan and Audrey. He still had the tie and the pens, but you couldn't see them then because of the suit of armour he was wearing. He was carrying a sword, and he was shouting as he ran, but he couldn't run very fast becuase of the armour, and he had trouble keeping up with the others.

The crowd from the balcony ran down the stairs and joined the chasing pack once more. The chase had sprung into life again.

"I did that," the narrator of the film said.

The moose's head over the fireplace has never liked horses, but he's starting to change his opinion now that he sees the money-making potential. That money-making potential actually results in us making money when the wife's aunt comes to visit. She was here the other day when we were measuring one of the lawns to work out the area. She worked out all the sums in great detail and the result was that I owed her money. She's great at getting money out of us around Chelthenam because she knows we'll humour her to get her tips on the horses, and we'll always win the money back when we follow her tips. She once won a bet on a horse whose jockey fell asleep during the race.

The Pencil

It's always nice to walk around the garden at this time of year. The daffodils appear from nowhere. My great-grandfather once wrote a poem about daffodils. He nailed it to the side of the shed with two six inch nails he found in the ground when he was digging a hole. My great-grandmother pointed out that if the poem had been any good he would have put it in a frame and hung it on the wall instead of nailing it to the shed. He probably would have hung it on the wall if he could have used a big enough nail. The line 'We'll need a bigger nail' would sum him up. The daffodil poem was just a minor blip.

My cousin Alan played a game of pitch-and-putt with his friends, Eric and Jim, one Saturday morning. On the way home, he called to see his girlfriend, Sonia, and they went for a walk in the woods. He told her he was afraid of wolves. She got out her notepad and pen and wrote that down. "Afraid of wolves. Okay."

She clicked the top of her pen and put it back into the top pocket of her coat. She put the notepad into her handbag. "Is there anything else I should make a note of?" she said.

He was going to tell her never to believe Eric when he says you should go to see the swans in the park, but he didn't want to put her to the trouble of getting the pen and notepad out again. "No, that's about it," he said. "I'm afraid of wolves."

After their walk, Sonia went back to the painting she was working on. It was a still life that featured fruit, vegetables and a few pencils, but one of the pencils was missing from the scene she had arranged.

She looked all over the place for it, but she couldn't find it. The only way it could have gone missing was if someone took it, and the only reason someone would take it would be to write something. She looked at pieces of paper for any words in pencil, and on the windowsill she found a note that said 'Gone to get a lamp shade'.

She remembered a huge birthday card she got for her last birthday. It was signed by over thirty people. She looked at that and tried to find a match between the handwriting on the note and the signatures.

She found a near-perfect match in Eric's signature, so she went to see him. He was looking at a new lamp shade. She said to him, "What have you done with my pencil?"

"I haven't done anything with it."

"You wrote this note, didn't you?"

"That's not my handwriting."

"Show me your handwriting so."

She gave him her pen and her notepad. He wrote 'my handwriting' in very bizarre letters.

"You're deliberately writing differently," she said.

"I'm not."

"I'm going to prove you stole my pencil. And then I'm going to kick you on the shins."

Her friend Dave was a laboratory assistant, and she went to the lab where he worked. "Could you prove that this note was written by Eric?" she said. "Here's another example of his handwriting." She gave him the piece of paper and the birthday card.

"We'll have a go anyway," Dave said.

He looked at the note and the card for a few minutes after Sonia left. Then he put them down and said to Aaron, another lab assistant, "I've often thought that this lab would make the greatest cocktail lounge ever."

He made a sign on a piece of cardboard that said 'cocktail lounge'.

"What about the drink?" Aaron said.

"What do you think all these bottles are for?"

Eric was worried he was in for a shin kicking. He had to find the pencil, or just get a replacement and hope she wouldn't notice the difference. He went to a pet shop and he asked the woman behind the counter if they sold pencils, but he realised his mistake, and he knew what she'd say even before she said, "This..."

"Oh yeah, this is a pet shop. Sorry."

He went to another shop, but he couldn't find an appropriate pencil. The only other option was to find the original pencil, but he wasn't entirely sure how he lost it. He had met his friend Sarah earlier, and she asked him if he'd seen her dog. He asked what it looked like and she said she'd draw a picture. So she used to pencil to draw a picture of a smiling dog.

He hadn't remembered seeing that dog, and when he asked her for the pencil she was fairly sure she had given it back to him. Eric couldn't remember that either, but he thought the pencil would turn up in his shoe or something. He searched both of his shoes later, but there was no sign of it. The most likely explanation was that Sarah still had it, but he couldn't find her.

Sonia went back to the lab in the afternoon and she asked Dave if he'd found the proof. He stared back at her for about ten seconds, completely expressionless, and then he said, "A pigeon took it."

"Which way did he go?"

It took another few seconds for Dave to say, "Up."

Sonia looked up at the ceiling.

She left the lab, and as she was walking down the street she met Eric. "Are your shins ready to be kicked?" she said. "My foot can't wait."

"I've just been to the park and there was a peacock in with the swans, but they haven't noticed he's not one of them. I think they're suspicious alright. He spreads his feathers every time they turn their backs."

"I've got to see this," Sonia said, and she started to walk away, but she stopped and said, "Wait a minute. Are you just trying to get rid of me?"

"Absolutely not." He smiled.

She thought he was up to something. She took out her notepad and looked at the note that said 'Alan is afraid of wolves', and at where Eric had written 'my handwriting', but neither of them were much help. "Okay," she said, and she walked on again.

There was no peacock in the park. There weren't any swans either. She sighed and resigned herself to losing the pencil, but then she remembered a film about a leprechaun who didn't give up so easily, and she knew she shouldn't give up so easily herself. She went to see Alan and she got him to phone Eric and ask where he was. Eric told him exactly where he was, and then he said, "You're not going to tell Sonia this, are you?"

"No no no... Well, yes. That is sort of the whole point of this."

Eric was with Jim. They were looking for Sarah in the fields where she was looking for her dog.

When Sonia and Alan arrived, Eric said, "Ah, I'm glad I met you. About this whole handwriting thing, that writing on the birthday card is my handwriting from last year. But I've been going to caligraphy classes since then, and it's completely changed the way I write. When I wrote this morning I didn't have my reading glasses, and my writing tends to go all over the place then because the caligraphy requires so much attention. Here's an example of my handwriting now."

He held up a piece of paper with very ornate writing on it. In his other hand he had a pair of glasses.

Alan said, "You just wear those glasses to frighten off a horse you don't like."

Behind them, a horse was walking towards Eric. He put on the glasses and turned around to face the horse. He moved his fingers about and made ghost noises. The horse turned around and walked back the way he came.

"I know you took my pencil," Sonia said, "and as soon as I get proof I'm going to kick you on the shins."

Back in the lab, Dave and Aaron were looking at a stuffed pigeon, and drinking through straws. After half an hour of looking at the pigeon, they left the lab and walked down the street towards the outskirts of town. They went down a quiet road, where they meet Sarah, and she said 'come with me' without using the words 'come with me' or any words at all. Actually, she might have meant 'go home', but they felt compelled to go with her. They followed her to a tree in a field, at the top of a slight hill.

The three of them stood there in silence for about ten minutes. Aaron said to Dave, "You know that way she has with words? Like, with not using words at all but still saying things."

"Yeah."

"It's a bit like that with doing things too."

"I know."

"She can do things without doing anything."

"Absolutely."

They turned around to look at Eric and Jim walking through a field below them. When they turned back, Sarah was holding a gin and tonic. Dave asked where she got it and she said, "The waiter gave it to me."

They looked around for the waiter, but they couldn't see him.

"He's probably hiding from ye," she said, but she says that about lots of things.

They walked away in search of the waiter, over barren ground, stones and moss, past trees bent by the wind, and they eventually found him sitting on a rock. He stood up when he saw them. He was holding a silver tray with drinks. Dave and Aaron were about to take one, but they looked back at Sarah. She started laughing for no apparent reason. The laughter faded away, and she was about to take another sip of her drink but she couldn't because she started laughing again.

Dave and Aaron looked back and forth between the waiter and Sarah. They didn't want to turn out like her, so they walked away without taking the drinks. They went back to the lab and took down the 'coctail lounge' sign. They put away the drinks. The pigeon returned, and Aaron tried to hide the stuffed pigeon.

They went to see Sonia with the note, and Dave said, "We've found proof that Eric wrote it. He signed his name down at the bottom."

"I knew it!"

They all went to the fields where Eric and Jim were looking for Sarah.

"I have scientific proof that you wrote that note," Sonia said to Eric. "So unless you give me back my pencil right now I'm going to kick you on the shins."

"I... well... Wait a minute." He saw a figure approaching, and he was hoping it would be Sarah -- this was his last chance to avoid a kicking. Alan and Jim were hoping it would be the waiter. Eric would have settled for the waiter too. But it was much smaller than Sarah or the waiter, and for a while Sonia thought it looked more like a leprechaun.

It was actually a wolf. "I'm afraid," Alan said.

None of them knew what to do. Should they run away and hope for the best, or stay together as a herd?

Sonia closed her eyes and imagined the leprechaun in the film. She remembered when he took off his glasses because he was in love with a female leprechaun, and he thought she'd like him more without the glasses.

"Take off your glasses," Sonia said to Eric.

When he took them off, the horse walked towards them. When the wolf saw the horse, he turned around and walked the other way.

Sonia smiled. Then she remembered the pencil and Eric's shins. "Right..."

Eric was running away. Jim and the horse followed him.

"I still don't have my pencil," Sonia said. "I've had that for years. I've been saving it for just the right painting, and I won't be able to finish the painting now. I didn't even get to kick him on the shins.

There was a tear in her eye. "Never mind," Alan said. "We'll go to the lake and let them fall down the hole I dug earlier."

As the sun descended beneath the horizon, Sonia and Alan stood on the banks of the lake and they kissed.

Eric and Jim walked through the woods, with the horse close behind. "We're lost," Jim said.

"We're not. Look, there's Sarah now." She was standing at the edge of the woods. "Sarah, did you, ahh!"

They fell down a hole. The horse looked down at them, then he turned around and walked away.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the Spring weather. We can open the windows and breathe the fresh air, listen to the distant sound of the bagpipes, look at the daffodils in the garden. I thought the bagpipes sounded out of place too, but I've devoloped a habit of not questioning things recently. Questions lead to answers of the form 'because you haven't ___ed the ___', and this inevitably leads to me ___ing the ___, which almost always involves fixing holes, digging holes, getting on the roof or cutting timber. The moose's head seems to enjoy the sound of the bagpipes, and they do sound much better in the distance.

A Blue Pool Table

The week of winter is over. It's much warmer now, and of course the wind and rain are back again. The garden is about to spring into life. I found a map of the grounds in the attic, and there was a small red dot on it. I tried digging in that spot, but there was nothing there. There's a red dot on a pane of glass in the glasshouse too. I didn't know if that made it more or less likely that I'd find something in the place indicated on the map. Given that I haven't found anything, I suppose it made it less likely.

My cousin Ted and his wife Anne bought a blue pool table, but all of the balls that came with it were white. A few of the relatives called around one Saturday afternoon to see it.

"You really need different coloured balls to play pool," Hugh said.

"I know," Ted said.

"You can't even play billiards with all white balls."

"I know."

"I just like the look of it," Anne said.

Ted played against his cousin, Gary.

Anne said, "There's a chocolate cake for whoever wins this game and a German dictionary for whoever cheats."

"What if you want a German dictionary?" Gary said.

"Most people would probably want the cake more."

"What if you cheat and win?"

"Cheaters never win."

"What about Ben Johnson?"

"They took the medal off him."

"He had it for a few days. You'd just need a few minutes to eat the chocolate cake. And then you could learn German."

Gary broke off, and they looked at the white balls fly all around the table.

"I'm going to pretend this one is the cue ball," Gary said.

My Aunt Bridget worked with a charity for Third World countries, and they had organised a ball in a hotel that evening to raise money. They invited a famous chat show host to make a speech. Bridget got most of the relatives to buying tickets.

The pool game went on while Anne got ready for that. Ted poured himself a glass of whiskey, and Gary took a shot.

"You potted the cue ball again," Ted said.

"Only because the sound of the ice in the glass put me off."

"By the time I finish the drink I should be able to keep my hand steady."

"If you're having a whiskey, I'm having one too."

"Fine."

Ted poured him a glass.

Anne went to the ball with Hugh and his fiancee, Annabel. Ted and Gary said they'd go along as soon as they finished the game. But the more they drank, the slower the game became.

The charity ball was being held in a very expensive hotel. The ball room was lit by crystal chandeliers. Waiters carried champagne glasses on trays.

When Annabel and Hugh were looking for the cloak room they came across a man trying to open the lock on a door with two small pins. He gave them directions to the cloak room, and he said, "Ye're probably wondering what I'm up to here."

"I was wondering why you weren't using a key," Hugh said.

"I'm actually a cat burglar."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'm here to steal a diamond necklace."

"Right. Best of luck with that."

"Very nice of you to say. Here's my business card." He handed Hugh a card.

"Right. Well good luck then."

"Thank you very much indeed. I hope we bump into each other again." He shook Hugh's hand and kissed Annabel's.

As they walked away, Hugh looked at the card. It said 'Mr. Cat "I've stolen your wallet" Burglar'. He checked his pocket. "Yeah, he's stolen my wallet alright."

When they turned around, the cat burglar was gone. They went to look for him.

The pool game was still going on. As Gary was leaning over the table, he thought he saw a woman in white out of the corner of his eye. He took his shot and looked up, but there was no one there. "Was there a woman in white standing near the door while I took my shot?" he said.

"You potted the cue ball again."

Half an hour later they'd potted all of the white balls. They looked at the empty blue table and wondered what to do. "Who potted the black?" Gary said.

"There's..."

"Oh yeah. I forgot."

They went to the hotel in a taxi. Gary thought he saw the woman in white in a mirror, but when he turned around all he saw were a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a red dress.

Annabel and Hugh found the cat burglar on a sofa in the lobby, looking out the window. "I could be entirely mistaken here," Hugh said, "but I think you might have stolen my wallet."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." He handed back the wallet and looked out the window again. He was nothing like the cheerful man they met earlier.

"Is anything wrong?" Annabel said.

"I just saw my former girlfriend with that chat show host who's giving the speech. She was 'with' him. She's French, and she's the love of my life, but now she's with someone else and all my hopes of winning her back have gone."

He remembered when he first saw her on a French chat show. She smoked all the time, and she didn't say much. She leant back on her chair with her legs crossed.

He told Annabel and Hugh about this, and about the time he met her at an art gallery, and lost her because she didn't like a painting he stole.

"I think I'll give up on the cat burglary for good," he said.

"Don't say that," Annabel said. "You could still win her back."

"What hope do I have? He's a famous chat show host, and she has a thing for chat show hosts. I'm just a cat burglar. Soon to be a former cat burglar."

"It's simple," Annabel said. "You just have to make him look stupid, and then you arrive back on the scene. She sees how suave and sophisticated you are, and how stupid he is, and you're back in business."

"But how would I make him look stupid?"

"That's just as simple."

Annabel and Hugh met the chat show host just outside the entrance to the ballroom. They introduced themselves and he asked them why they were so small. "Why is everyone so small? What's... Why is..." He put on his glasses. "Why do you look smaller when I'm wearing my glasses?"

"I don't know," Hugh said.

"Maybe it's because I feel so much taller."

"Quite possibly. We were just wondering if we could have your autograph."

"Yes, of course."

As he signed his name, the cat burglar stood behind him and carefully removed the notes for the speech from the pocket of his jacket.

Gary was looking everywhere for the woman in white, and Ted started to think that he should be looking for her too. They both kept an eye out for her when they weren't drinking champagne. Gary thought he saw her in an elevator just as the doors were closing. They went to the top floor of the hotel and walked down every corridor, hoping to find her. When they saw her getting into the elevator, they both ran towards her, but the doors closed just before they got there. "You potted the cue ball again," Ted said.

The chat show host went to the microphone on the stage to make his speech. As the applause died down he took the notes from his pocket and looked at them. And kept looking at them. The first one just said 'Mr. Cat "I've stolen your speech" Burglar', and the rest of them were in a similar vein.

He spent a minute looking through them in silence, and when he got back to the first one he started looking through them again. "No, I don't think I can use any of this stuff in the speech," he said. "Unless... I've stolen your water bed."

He looked out at the audience and smiled. They looked back at him in shock.

The cat burglar sidled up to his ex in a way that only cat burglars can sidle, and said, "Hello, Carol."

She dropped her glass but he caught it.

When the chat show host got off the stage he remembered where he had seen one of those cards before. Annabel and Hugh used one to get his autograph.

When they saw him approaching they guessed that he suspected their involvement, so they ran to the elevator. He ran after them, but the doors closed just before he got there. They got out at the third floor and walked very quickly down a corridor. They took a left, then a right, and they kept walking until they were sure they'd lost him because they were lost themselves.

On the same floor, a ballet dancer stood outside the door to her room. She couldn't move because she didn't know what to do. She was supposed to say a few words at the fundraiser too, and her elocution teacher had given her some advice on it. She looked up to her left and imagined her teacher's face looking down at her, saying, "And remember..." She could see the face clearly, but she couldn't hear anything after 'and remember'.

Annabel and Hugh spent twenty minutes wandering around the hotel corridors without finding a way out. Hugh remembered when they got lost a maze, and they followed a woman in a white dress out of it. She ran barefoot on the grass, laughing and looking back at them.

He smiled when he pictured that sight in his mind, and the smile grew wider when he saw a woman in white go by at the end of the corridor. "Let's just follow her," he said.

"No."

"Remember when we got lost in the maze? That woman in white showed us the way out. She was very nice."

"I didn't like her at all. Let's follow that man in black instead."

A man in a black suit was walking towards them. He was wearing a dark grey shirt and a black tie. When he went past them, Annabel and Hugh turned around and walked after him. They followed him to a door at the end of a narrow corridor. He went inside, and they followed a few seconds later. They were in a dimly lit stairwell. The man in black went up, and they went up too.

When he got to the top of that flight of stairs he turned around and pointed a gun at them. "Why are ye following me?" he said.

Annabel and Hugh didn't know what to say at first, and they didn't have to say anything. Gary said something in German on a flight of stairs above, and the man in black looked up. Annabel and Hugh ran away.

They went back the way they came, and they kept running until they knew they weren't being followed and they'd lost themselves again. They stopped to get their breaths back. "I knew we should have followed the woman in white," Hugh said.

When they turned a corner and saw the ballet dancer, they decided to follow her instead, but she didn't move at all. Ted and Gary eventually found them.

"We got lost," Hugh said, "and we're following her to find our way out. But we're still lost."

Ted asked the ballet dancer if she knew the way to the elevators, but she said nothing. She didn't know what to say.

They wondered if she understood English. Gary got out the German dictionary and said words like 'elevator' and 'pool' in German. She didn't understand a word he said. She looked up to her left again and imagined the face of her German teacher saying what he always said: "And remember, if it can wrap itself around your neck, it's not a hamster."

"Well, as long as I remember that," the dancer said, and she walked away.

They followed her, but on the way, Gary looked down a corridor and saw the man in black coming out of a room. A long blue carpet lay between him and them. Gary walked towards him, and so did Ted. They started running. Neither of them were entirely sure how, but they both knew that this had something to do with the end of the pool game.

The man in black ran away when he saw Ted and Gary running towards him. He looked back as he ran, and they were just behind him. When he turned around again he saw the woman in white right in front of him. She had just come out of a room, and he tripped as he tried to avoid her. Ted and Gary landed right on top of him, breaking their fall, and possibly breaking something in the thing that broke their fall too.

Ted and Gary were a bit dazed at first. When they looked around they noticed policemen pointing guns at them. They both came to the conclusion that they had just assaulted someone important, but as they stood up with their hands in the air they realised that the guns were pointing at the man in black. He was a jewel thief, and he had succeeded in stealing the diamond necklace, until being heroically wrestled to the ground by Ted and Gary.

That's the way the press portrayed it -- they heroically wrestled an armed thief to the ground. They were interviewd on TV. Ted said, "It's always been a philosophy of mine that cheaters never win." Gary said more-or-less the same thing in German.

They were given a reward by the owner of the necklace. Ted worked out how many chocolate cakes they could buy with it, and he kept reminding Anne of this.

Annabel found a 'thank you' card in her purse. It was from the cat burglar and Carol. She thought it was very nice that he didn't steal the contents of her purse.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been looking slightly surprised recently. We've all been surprised, ever since the wife's uncle called around the other evening. After a few drinks he said, "Do you know those female TV presenters who find themselves with knee pads and a helmet, looking down into a canyon, a raging river below, and they've got this permanent smile, completely forced of course -- they're really just doing this in the hope of getting their own chat show -- and there's a man with a beard and lots of ropes who they obviously don't like, but they have to keep the smile going pretty much twenty-four hours a day, even when they're asleep, and they still manage to keep a nervous smile in place when the helicopter arrives? I nearly married one of those." I suppose the obvious thing to say there would be to ask him to expand on that, but no one said anything at the time.

Names

Winter waited until spring before it finally showed up. There was a light covering of snow in the garden this morning, which was a lovely sight. The dog chose to look at the ice rather than at the garden. The icicles seem to have a hypnotic hold over him. We once found a spider who was fascinated by ice in a whiskey glass -- don't ask how we found such a spider. Actually, it's good advice not to ask about spiders and ice at all. The wife phoned her aunt to ask about it, but she was upset that we thought she'd know something about a spider staring at ice in a whiskey glass.

My cousin Charlotte was walking down a city street one day when she met Craig, another cousin. He was asking people to fill in a questionnaire, and she agreed to do it. He gave her a clipboard and a pen, and she read the first question: 'Is the man who gave you this clipboard wearing a fake moustache?'

She looked up at him, and he smiled. She answered 'no' to that one, but she knew he was up to something.

She mentioned this when she went to visit Aunt Joyce that evening. They were walking around the garden when Charlotte told the story of the questionnaire, and Joyce said she had already suspected he was up to something. Craig's girlfriend was the daughter of Joyce's neighbour, and Joyce had been getting regular reports of Craig's activities. He'd been seen wearing a fake moustache on numerous occasions.

Charlotte asked if she could use Joyce's phone to call Craig's girlfriend. She went inside to the telephone table in the hall. It was an old phone. Charlotte dialled the first number, and she looked at the dial as it slowly spun back around to its starting place. She smiled. When she dialled the next number she closed her eyes just to listen to the sound.

Craig was rehearsing with his brass band at the time. When the band first started, all of them played tubas, but they'd branched out into other instruments since then. Craig suddenly remembered a date with his girlfriend, Heather. "I'll be back in half an hour," he said.

He managed to fit the date into four short stages.

They met in the park. "I got you these flowers."

"Aww."

Then in the cinema. "This cinema is very, very sticky," Heather said.

They sat in a bar. She said, "But... Do you know what I mean?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"It's just..." She moved her hands out.

"Yeah."

He walked her home and they kissed goodnight outside her front door. Then he went back to the rehearsal.

Charlotte was still dailling the phone, and smiling at it. The hall was in near-darkness then. When she finally got through to Heather, she told her about the questionnaire. "I was just wondering if he said anything to you about the questionnaire, or... or anything."

"Actually, now that I think about it, he didn't say very much at all tonight... Although he did mention a horse called Nil Desperandum running in a race tomorrow. That's about all he said really."

On the following morning, Charlotte phoned her cousin Nicola and asked her to follow Craig. Nicola and her friends, Petra and Jen, went to see Charlotte in her office. Charlotte had a map on the wall with coloured pins to indicate where Joyce said Craig had been seen in the moustache.

"I sort of became more interested in the way the dots looked rather than where he was," Charlotte said. "I've arranged them so they look a bit like a flower."

Nicola, Petra and Jen stared at the map. Jen nodded.

"One place I know for sure he was at was near the cathedral."

Nicola, Petra and Jen stood on a footpath near the cathedral. The sky was grey. This was an old, quiet part of the city. No one passed by on the pavement until a man in a moustache ran past them. Nicola put a finger to her chin and looked up.

They followed him down streets and narrow alleys, but they lost him when he ran through a museum. They kept walking around the streets, hoping to find him. They stopped outside a radio station and looked across towards the other side of the street.

A man in a suit came up to them and said, "Excuse me, but I think if ye look around ye'll find him in the lobby of the radio station."

They turned around and looked in the window. Craig was sitting down inside, trying to hide from them behind a newspaper.

They went in and he said, "Ah, just the people I've been looking for. Would ye mind posting a letter for me? If you look at the stamp, you'll see a little dog, and it looks as if the dog is waving."

Nicola held the letter as they walked slowly away down the street. The three of them looked at the stamp.

The man in the suit came along and said, "I have a feeling this is just a distraction."

They noticed that the letter was addressed to Craig himself. Nicola opened the envelope, and the letter said: 'Yes, this is just a distraction'.

They ran back to the radio station.

Craig was being interviewed by the DJ. Nicola, Petra and Jen sat in on the interview too, wearing headphones.

Craig had his false moustache, and he was talking about being an artist.

"Bell-ringing. Ringing a bell. Door frames, and rugby players too, annnnd... Scottish people."

"Are you reading that from the back of your hand?" the DJ said.

"No."

He put his hands behind his back.

Nicola, Petra and Jen went to see Aunt Joyce after the interview. A friend of hers had asked her to look after three pet mice while she was going away on holiday, and Joyce was making tiny name tags for the mice when Nicola and her friends arrived. "It's the only way I'll remember their names," she said.

The mice ate the name tags.

"I'm still more likely to remember their names now that they've done that."

They went outside to the glasshouse, and they looked out over the fields as it started to rain. "The rain is always there," Joyce said. "Spring, summer, autumn. And then winter. There's always winter. Always another one. Or nearly always. You can only go through so many winters. The seasons take hold of this place. All of this land, this soil." Nicola, Petra and Jen looked down when she said 'soil'. "And the land takes hold of us, constantly reminding us of this home we need to live, our place in this world... I suppose everything I say will be overshadowed by the fact that the mice just ate their name tags."

They had tea in the kitchen and Joyce told them about some of the places Craig was seen. "Ye've already been to the cathedral, and then there was on top of a tall building, and standing by a fence, looking into a field, and there was the aquarium."

The rain cleared and the sun came out in the afternoon. Nicola, Petra and Jen stood on top of a tall building and looked down on the city below.

They stood by a fence and looked into a field full of horses. The man in the suit came along and said, "Now this horse here looks to be very fast, but he can only run in circles. When you see him in the field, you just think, 'He can run very fast.' You don't think, 'He can only run in circles.'"

They watched as the horse ran around and around very quickly.

Nicola, Petra and Jen walked down a quiet street in the city. They were tired after all the walking and running they had done. They stopped in front of a shop, and they and saw three men in the window. The men were dressed in black, with dark sunglasses and black berets. They were arguing about something.

The man in the suit came along and said, "They're a jazz band, and they're arguing about whether or not Craig is trying to insult them when he tells people that they always set fire to their beards during shows. And he is."

The jazz band looked out the window.

In a library, the man in the suit sat at a desk with books open in front of him. Nicola, Petra and Jen stood behind him, next to the jazz band. The man in the suit was making notes. He showed the band a sheet of paper and said, "Yeah, he's definitely trying to insult ye." The band looked at the paper. "If ye actually had beards, that would make a difference. And if ye always set fire to those beards during shows, then he'd just be stating a fact."

Craig's bandmates continued their rehearsal in a big white room as the jazz band chased Craig all around them. When Craig ran out the door, the jazz band followed, and the rest of the brass band followed with their instruments. They ran through the streets.

They all stopped to look at the fish in the aquarium. Nicola, Petra and Jen were there too. They looked in at the fish with the two bands, and the fish looked back out at them. No one noticed when Craig slipped away.

Charlotte was still in her office. She dialled her phone with a pen, and she twisted the curly wire around her finger as she waited for her friend Alison to answer. "Hi. I just dialled the phone with a pen... Yeah. Do you want to go to the races?"

There was an evening race meeting on at the track. The first race was at five. Charlotte put money on Nil Desperandum in the five-forty, and he won.

Nicola looked through a newspaper outside the bus station. Petra and Jen stood next to her, staring ahead. Nicola drew a red line around an ad for an outdoor concert by the river.

The three of them turned up at the concert in identical disguises: white silk scarves and dark sunglasses.

They listened to one of the brass band talk about a lecture Craig gave on being an artist. "It was mostly about ringing bells. About how you had to ring the bell and things."

When Craig arrived he was counting money.

Nicola, Petra and Jen were still wearing their disguises when they met the jazz band. They danced together in a bar, and they went for a walk through the park. Nicola and her friends made name tags for the band and for themselves, so they'd all remember each other's names. The band came close to smiling as the walked around with the pieces of cardboard that said 'Steve', 'Edgar' and 'Conrad'.

Nicola, Petra and Jen went to Aunt Joyce's house. Charlotte was there, and she told them about her win at the races on the horse that Craig had mentioned. "And I've got these photos of Craig too. Heather sent them to me."

She showed them the photos on her phone. One of them was of Craig with the fake moustache and a name tag that said 'My name is Conrad. I'm an artist'.

"I bet he owes someone money," Charlotte said, "and he used that disguise to hide from them. And Heather also told me that his band is supposed to play at a charity dinner with the jazz band. Lots of famous people will be there. He's spreading the rumours about the band because he wants to gig all to himself and his band."

"That's probably it," Joyce said.

"I'm going to call him and tell him I know what he's up to. Can I use your phone?" Charlotte said, putting her own phone behind her back.

"Yeah, of course."

Charlotte smiled and ran to the phone in the hall.

They stood in the back garden. The shadows got longer as the sun descended. "This is the only place to live," Joyce said. "This land, these sights that live on in my mind long after I close my eyes. That's where home is. This land, the sun, the moon and the stars, and then there's us... I made these name tags for the mice for when they're asleep. They just say 'zzz'."

They went inside and Joyce got them all drinks.

Nicola, Petra and Jen stared ahead with glasses in their hands, sad longing faces and silence. Jen looked down. Nicola and Petra still looked ahead.

They went back outside. The sky above the horizon was red, and above that a pale blue, and then black.

Nicola suddenly put a hand in the air and said, "Oh, ah, I... ah..."

"What is it?" Joyce said.

"Is it just that Craig bet lots of money on the horse that runs in circles because he thought he was really fast, and then he owed someone lots of money because of that, so he was hiding from this person. He was probably afraid. He wore the moustache and a name tag with 'Conrad' on it. The only Conrad he knew was the one in the jazz band. That Conrad is an artist, and that's what gave Craig the idea to write 'I'm an artist' on the name tag. But he had trouble keeping up the pretence. He ended up giving a lecture on being an artist, and doing the radio interview. And he got the gig at the charity event as Conrad the artist. That's why he wanted to get rid of the jazz band, because they know who he really is and they'd tell everyone he's a fake."

The man with the suit walked over to her and said, "That's it exactly."

Nicola applauded herself, jumping up and down.

The moose's head over the fireplace has no interest in the coloured lights on the window pane. It took me a while to explain their origin. I tried watching 'Lawrence of Arabia', hoping that would help. When the wife asked if I'd found an answer I said, "If..." For a second I thought I could explain it by using something I saw in 'Lawrence of Arabia', but when I tried to put it into words there was nothing there. "It's just the DVD player." That's what I said an hour later, but I'm sure the moose's head knew all along.