'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Craig in Love


I love the smell of the garden after the grass has been cut. It's nice to walk around the place and look at things and say, "Hm. I haven't noticed that before. I hope it doesn't bury anything else." And walk on again.


My cousin Craig loved looking at houses and thinking about things. He hated looking at his trousers, but he had to do it every so often. He normally only did it when he noticed other people looking at them a lot. One day everyone was looking at them, but he didn't notice because he was in love.


Her name was Gillian, and he had met her at a barbeque. Her eyes did something to his knees that his previous girlfriend had failed to accomplish with a tennis racket. But he never got a chance to be alone with her because a friend of his spent most of the night telling her why you shouldn't trust people pretending to be leprechauns.


He was in love with her and he was determined to make her fall in love with him too. He bought her little presents, but one of them ran away and hid in her house. Craig kept saying, "It wasn't supposed to do that." She got angrier every time he said it.


He serenaded her with a song about love. He was accompanied by a Mexican band, but they didn't like bees. They weren't really Mexican either. He was angry that they hadn't mentioned either of these things beforehand, because when a bee joined the group they started swinging at it with their guitars and shouting obscenities in English. They didn't know any Spanish obscenities. Some of them hid in her house. Craig said, "They definitely weren't supposed to do that. I specifically asked them not to do it."


One of the band ran from the house beneath a rug that he found in front of Gillian's fireplace. He was trying to hide from the bee. He ran through the fields. Craig and Gillian chased him.


They saw him climbing over a gate, but when they climbed the gate ten seconds later they couldn't see him anywhere. It was nearly dark. Craig didn't know which way to go, and neither did the man who was telling him which way to go. "You just have one thing to do," Craig said. "One thing, and you can't even do that."


"Ah... Try going that way," the man said.


"You don't sound too sure of that."


"No really, that way. I think you should definitely go over there."


Craig went over there, but 'there' contained a bull. He looked around, but the man who was telling him where to go had gone, and so had Gillian. Craig ran away.


He went to see Gillian on the following day. He asked her if she'd go out with him that evening, but she said, "The man who was telling you where to go is taking me out to dinner. He told me somewhere you could go, if you asked."


"No, that's okay."


"Sorry."


"Just give me one more chance. I know you're the one for me, and I must be the one for you too."


"I'm sorry, but I just don't think it's going to work."


"Okay... Would it make any difference if I changed my trousers?"


"Definitely."


Craig went home and put on his best pair of trousers. He came back and asked her out again. She said, "I'd love to," and it looked as if his eyes were doing to her knees what her eyes had always done to his. His knees, that is. He told the man who was telling him where to go where to go.


The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't like pieces of string, little dogs and waiters. These are the latest three items to be added to the list of things he doesn't like. Frogs and staplers are on the list of things he likes. Candles are on the list of things he doesn't believe in. His list of potential winners of the World Cup contains five teams, but there are only eight teams still left in the competition. I think he's just waiting to see who'll win the quarter-final between Argentina and Germany.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Joyce's Party


My brain keeps telling me I should sit on the wooden chair in the shade of the oak tree and say, "What fridge?" People keep telling me I've been in the sun for too long. I can't repeat what my brain says about them.


My cousin Hugh went to Spain on his holidays. And then he came back again. And then he put on his reading glasses to look at the dog, but the dog looked more-or-less the same as he did before. Hugh wondered what else he could look at through the glasses, seeing as he already had them on.


He opened a letter that had come in the post. It was an invitation to a party at his Aunt Joyce's house on the following evening. He hated Joyce's parties. Things always went wrong, mainly for him. He thought that was why she kept inviting him. People could see things going wrong for him and say, "I'm glad that's not me." He often got his foot stuck in things, and sometimes he had to take those things home with him. He was always humiliated. So he was angry when he read the invitation. He blamed the dog for it.


He told his fiancee, Annabel, that he wasn't going to go to the party. She said to him, "Would you rather be stuck somewhere with your own hair, and your hair keeps moving about, and you tell it to stop moving but it doesn't?"


She had been coming up with questions like that ever since she read a book about logic. He's never been able to answer them. "Okay, I'll go," he said.


So he went to the party and there was a small explosion and people blamed him for it, and he said, "That bloody dog."


Small people laughed at him. He was going to laugh at them for being small, but he knew that wouldn't go down well. He laughed at a blackbird instead, for being small. That didn't go down well.


He went into the back garden and tried to avoid the other guests. It was a beautiful summer evening. The dogs were forming a plan to do something about the flies, but they ended up doing something about the flower bed instead because it was easier.


Joyce came out to talk to Hugh. She said, "Wouldn't you like to come inside to talk to the others? That man who climbed the mountain is here."


"No, I'm grand here."


"I thought you liked him."


"No. He called me a flower pot."


"He meant it as a compliment."


"No he didn't."


"Will you talk to some of your cousins anyway?"


"No." Hugh walked away, but he didn't get far. He tripped on a pipe sticking out of the ground. "The dogs have been working on a plan to do something about that," Joyce said.


Hugh's cousin, Ted, was at the party with his wife, Anne. Accidents always happen to Anne at these parties too. She just lets things happen and says, "Hooray, I'm really glad that happened." Or else she hides in a tree. That's where she was when Hugh met her. She told him it was the ideal place to be to avoid being humiliated, so Hugh joined her in the tree.


She'd been reading 'The Castle' by Kafka, and she spoke about that. Hugh didn't have any interest in Kafka, but being with her in the tree was still much better than being on the ground with things to trip over or get stuck in. He wondered why he had never thought of this before.


My cousin June's kids, Daisy and Graham, were playing in the garden with their cousin, Scott. They saw Hugh and Anne in the tree, and Daisy asked them what they were doing up there. Anne said, "We're discussing Kafka."


Annabel was talking to the man who climbed the mountain. He called her a flower, and she thought he was fascinating. But she stopped listening to him when she heard the kids say, "Anne and Hugh, sitting in a tree, D I S S S I C C I E B S S C who G I I S S..."


It went on like this for about a minute. None of them knew how to spell 'discussing', let alone 'Kafka'. Daisy thought she could spell 'discussing', but Graham and Scott put her off. Scott's attempt to spell it included the letters 'X Y Z' and his parents' phone number.


It ended with Daisy saying the letters 'I N G'. Annabel was shocked when she heard it. She couldn't say exactly what Anne and Hugh were up to in the tree, but she knew it was something they shouldn't be doing.


She went to the tree and threw a stone at Hugh. She missed with that, but she hit him with a garden gnome, and she had a very high hit-rate with the watering can.


All the guests from the party gathered around the tree to see her throwing things at Hugh. Someone said, "I'm glad it's not me." Joyce smiled at that.


The moose's head over the fireplace still hasn't given any hints as to who he thinks will win the World Cup. He normally gets these things right. The wife's uncle says he knew a woman who had a habit of saying 'my eyes are awake'. He thought she was doing it to frighten her knees. But she was very perceptive. She had an excellent record when it came to predicting the outcomes of sporting events, even though she didn't like sport. He says he can't ask her about the World Cup because they're no longer on speaking terms. As with so many of his relationships with women, it ended when he told her she was too good for him and he left for someone better than her. If she didn't see that one coming, I wouldn't trust her opinion on the World Cup.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Chickens


The sun is back again, after a few grey days. The world is a nice place to be on these summer days if you ignore the bits outside the garden and the things in the garden that throw sticks at your head and say, "I was aiming for a monkey."


My cousin Alan talks a lot after a few drinks. He started talking about Robin Hood in the pub one evening, and two hours later he found himself talking about chickens. Chickens have an affinity for Germany and they say 'whoosh'. This was Alan's theory anyway. He was constantly finding out new things about how much he knew. He never knew he knew so much about chickens until he started talking about cats. So he jumped at the chance to buy forty-two chickens -- a man in the pub was selling them.


His parents were on holiday at the time, and Alan kept the chickens in their back garden. He gave them names, but he couldn't remember them all. Fido and Malley were the only two he remembered because they were always fighting.


Trying to keep the chickens in the garden was proving difficult. Fido and Malley didn't help. They kept the other chickens moving about the place. Some of them turned up in the house, and one of them found a bucket to live in.


Alan and his brother, Ronan, built a chicken coop, but they couldn't get the chickens to go in. They could put Fido in, but he'd always escape as they were trying to put Malley in.


"Maybe I should have got forty-two cats instead," Alan said.


Feeding them took ages. They had to go around to the chickens all over the garden, the ones in the house, the one in the bucket, the ones hiding under a blanket, and so on.


Ronan had a bath before meeting his girlfriend, Audrey. When he was in the bath, a lightbulb came on over his head and he said, "Aha! We should put the food in the chicken coop."


They tried this, but it didn't work. Fido would go in to get his food, but he'd come back out before Malley would go in.


Audrey was looking after her nephew, Pete. She was normally very mild-mannered and always happy, but she was losing her patience with Pete. Ronan met them on the street outside her house. She was lecturing her nephew.


Pete said, "I was only doing it to show the dog what not to do."


"Leave that bloody dog alone," Audrey said.


A group of people ran by. They were all screaming, and some looked behind them.


"He was tired," Pete said, "and I was tired, and trees sound lonely in the wind."


They watched as a turtle passed by very slowly.


"And leave that turtle alone too."


Ronan tried to think of something they could do to keep Pete occupied. They went to see The Wizard of Oz, but all he said was 'stop calling me that'.


They went for a walk on the beach, and they met a friend of theirs, Ray. He has two dogs, and they like each other, which is good. He told them so. 'I only wanted to know how many people could fit in a phone booth' is another thing he said to them.


Pete chased the dogs around the beach, but they were really manouvering him around the place. Ray kept saying things to the dogs, and Ronan wondered if he was really controlling them, like with sheep dogs. That's when he got the idea of using them on the chickens to get them into the coop.


He told Alan about his idea when he got home that night. Ray and his dogs were due to arrive in the morning.


Ronan looked dazed when Alan met him in the morning.


"What happened to you?" Alan said.


"I just had another brilliant idea about the chickens and then I got electrocuted by a lightbulb."


"What was the idea?"


"I can't remember."


"Was it the one about the dogs?"


"No. I remember that one."


"Well if that one works we won't need another idea."


The chickens all looked worried when Ray arrived with his dogs. Fido and Malley tried to look as if they didn't care, but they were inching away from Ray.


Audrey and Pete were there to see what would happen when Ray released the dogs, and it was well worth seeing. The chickens went all over the place, almost everywhere apart from the coop. A lot of them got into the house. Two of them fought over the bucket.


Things started to calm down again after Ray left with the dogs. The noise of the chickens completely ceased when a turtle walked across the lawn. One of the chickens followed the turtle, and then another one followed too. All of the chickens formed a line behind the turtle, who went through the open door of the coop. The turtle was able to get out of the coop under the wire at the other side, but the chickens were stuck. They watched the turtle slowly move away. They only turned around when they heard the door closing. Alan wagged a finger at them and said, "Ha h' ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Haaaa ha ha ha ha."


"That was my idea," Ronan said.


The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the World Cup. He fell asleep during England's game against Paraguay (I think he was just commenting on Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard's inability to form a partnership in the centre of midfield) but apart from that he's been wide-awake all the time. It's difficult to tell who he favours to win the competition. I'm not the only one keeping a close eye on that before placing a bet. He liked Italy after seeing them play against Ghana, but he was impressed by the Dutch too.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

The Birds


The leaves are on the trees, the wild flowers are on the lawn, the smells, the sound of tractors on the road, all these signs of summer, like little pieces of a jig-saw that come together and you say, "Wow, it's a duck." It was meant to be Napoleon.


My cousin Charlie was going to the shop one day when he stopped and said, "Wait a minute. Where am I going again?"


A little voice in his ear said, "You're going to the shop. Owls can turn their heads almost all the way around."


"Oh yeah," he said, and he walked on again.


He met Jill before he got to the shop. She had red hair, and perched on her arms were little birds that said 'tweet'. Actually, Jill said 'tweet' a lot more than the birds, but they seemed to like her, in their own way. They didn't stand on her head.


Charlie said to her, "Are you doing anything this evening?"


She looked at one of the birds, who shook his head. She wasn't sure how to interpret that. She chose the most literal interpretation and she said 'no'. The bird shook his head again.


"Do you want to go to a show with me?" Charlie said.


"I'd love to," she said. She didn't consult the bird that time.


The show was about Cromwell, who was hit by twenty-seven custard pies. Apart from being hit by pies, the rest of the show was mostly just him keeping count of the amount of times he was hit by a pie. After the fourth one he started saying, "Surely I can't be hit by any more than four custard pies."


Charlie bought her dinner too, and he said he liked her dress, even though he had no real opinion on it. Even the bird who kept shaking his head wasn't shaking his head as often.


But it all went horribly wrong. He keeps count of these things, and there are sixteen occasions when it all went horribly wrong, including this one. There are twenty-three 'slightly wrong's and one 'disastrously wrong' when he spent three days in jail in Cuba. He would have put his date with Jill into the 'slightly wrong' file, but the birds all looked shocked, and that made it much worse.


All that happened was he told her about the time he said 'Blockbusters' for no apparent reason. He had meant to say 'Countdown', but there wasn't any reason for that either. Then he told her he said it at a wedding, and that's when the birds looked shocked.


At the end of the night he asked if he could see her again and she said, "I don't think so." The birds all nodded. Charlie chose to interpret this in a literal way, as a 'yes', but no, she really didn't want to see him again.


Charlie wasn't going to give up on Jill. He was determined to get back in her good books, or in the birds' good books. He just needed to show he was pro-bird.


One of his friends, Emmet, had made friends with one of the blackbirds in his garden. He suggested that they get this bird to land on Charlie's shoulder while he's talking to Jill. Charlie would act as if this sort of thing happens all the time. She'd eventually mention it and he'd say, "Hm? Oh that's just Lance. He's always landing on my shoulder. I think he likes the view."


The plan worked perfectly during the trial runs. Charlie put some bird seed on his shoulder and the blackbird always landed there.


They put the plan into action one evening when Jill was sitting on a bench in the park. Charlie went over to her and said hello. He got a very cold 'hello' in response. That's when Emmet released the blackbird, but Lance flew away in the wrong direction. Emmet kept watching him until he disappeared into the blue sky.


Charlie just stood there with nothing to say. Jill wasn't going to say anything either. The same applied to the birds. He said goodbye and left.


He still wasn't ready to give up. He tried to think of ways to impress Jill, rather than the birds. Emmet suggested playing tennis. "She's often at the tennis courts," he said. "She'll be impressed by seeing you win a game of tennis, and she'll be much more impressed by what you wear. The last time I played, my shorts caused two different women to faint and hit their heads. Joe says it was the same woman, but she told me herself it wasn't."


Charlie and Emmet waited at the tennis courts until Jill arrived, and then Charlie got out of his tracksuit and did his warm-up exercises in front of Jill. But his routine was cut short when Lance arrived. He was heading straight for Charlie's shoulder, but Charlie swung his tennis racket in the air to prevent the bird from landing. "You're too late now," he said. "You had your chance."


Lance flew away, and Charlie remembered Jill's birds. He looked over at them, but they were all nodding their heads. They didn't like other birds (Charlie hoped that this was the reason for the nodding, and not because they liked his shorts). Jill smiled when the birds nodded (Charlie hoped that his shorts had something to do with the smile).


He asked her if she'd like to go for a drink after his game of tennis, and she said she'd love to. The birds nodded again.


As for the little voice in his ear, he went to the doctor to get something done about that.


The moose's head over the fireplace has become an expert on kitchens. The wife is planning a new kitchen, and she made a few designs. She showed them to the moose's head to see how he'd react. I don't think he's reacting at all. I'm certainly not. Her uncle, William, has started saying the words 'morning on the Serengeti' to the moose's head, to see if he'll react to that. He doesn't, although it's more likely to get a reaction than the kitchen designs. William says it's reverse psychology, but he says that about everything.