Buttons

The wife's aunt keeps saying our garden reminds her of Germany. I keep reminding her that she's never been to Germany, but she says she was there in spirit with a man she met on a tram. I block out most of her stories, expecially the ones that start with men she met on trams. I leave her alone when she starts singing Kurt Weill songs.

My cousin Isobel was staying in Aunt Joyce's summer house in a seaside town. There were lots of things to do around the town, besides spending time on the beach. In the museum, a collection of buttons was on display, along with photos of people wearing buttons.

After her third trip to see the buttons, Isobel skipped down the stone steps outside the museum, whistling as she went, but she stopped at the bottom, where a sad film crew stood on the footpath, just looking sad. She stood there with them, and she began to look sad too.

She couldn't focus on being sad for too long, and after a few minutes her mind began to wander. She said, "If you saw a bear in an igloo, would you blame it on something you drank or would you drink something to forget it?"

They thought about it for a while, but they couldn't answer her question, and they all felt sad enough to drink themselves into forgetting it.

"If we can't find something to film," the camera man said, "we're all just going to go to the pub and forget about this day."

"I know something ye'll definitely want to film," Isobel said. "Follow me."

They followed her into the museum and she showed them around the collection of buttons.

By the end they were only slightly less sad than they had been at the start, and that was only because they'd forgotten her question about the bear in the igloo.

They walked around the town, looking for other things to film. Outside the cinema there was a man holding a red rose, waiting for someone. They filmed him as he watched the cars pass by on the street, talking out loud to himself. "Is all this worth anything at all in the end? Does 'all this' amount to nothing? You go ever onward, forward because you see a tiny point of light ahead, the whole point of life. And you expect it to get bigger, but it doesn't. It becomes so small it's like a pin, and sometimes you wonder if you can see it at all, or if you're just imagining it. You're faced with the prospect of a pointless, lightless life, drifting listlessly on to nowhere in particular."

The film crew found this even more depressing than the bear in the igloo.

They filmed in the park as the afternoon entered evening. They saw three people dressed all in black, creeping through the shadows. They kept filming until the people in black hid behind some bushes.

Aunt Joyce's friend, Shiela, lives in this town, and Isobel called in to see her every day for a cup of coffee. She took the film crew to see Shiela's garden.

They weren't the only ones to show an interest in Shiela's garden that day. A man in a dark brown suit was presenting a TV documentary about it. He had been talking about the garden all afternoon, saying things like, "Familiarity reduces everything to the wallpaper you use to cover the walls in your mind and keep out the wolves and the unwelcome relatives with their batteries and their own peculiar smell. Nature is familiarity's enemy, forever renewing, re-shaping and re-colouring. Fashion does something similar to the relatives, but with none of nature's style."

The one thing that Shiela found odd was that there was no film crew, not even a camera.

Things began to make sense when Isobel arrived with her new friends. The film crew were happy to be filming a presenter, even though they'd have preferred a more interesting subject than the garden. The presenter just carried on as before.

They filmed in the garden in the evening sun. Long-wave radio filled the kitchen as Shiela made a cake. She heard the sound of a cookery show and the voices of the news readers, all mixed up with the voice of the presenter in the back garden.

There was a small square of concrete at the side of the house. It was surrounded by walls. There was a door in one wall, and it led to a narrow road up the hill. Isobel stood on a milk crate to look over the front wall, and she could see the sea. She took a deep breath and said, "It wasn't meant to be about bald people."

She meant to say something else, possibly something about the bear in the igloo. She was sorry she remembered the time she said something about bald people, but that wasn't actually meant to be about bald people.

The film crew were filming her and the presenter had stopped talking.

"Let's go inside and watch the news," Isobel said.

They turned on the TV in the kitchen. The news reader said, "We can now cross live to my ears, who are with my new ear rings."

Neither her ears nor her ear rings had much to say. They said it, and then it was back to her glasses in the studio, who said something about a diamond display in this seaside town. The news reader herself was reporting from the town. She stood on the beach, but you could barely hear her voice over the sound of the waves. Her subtitle shoes translated what she said. The diamonds would be on public display for a week, and the police were at their annual squirrel race in the dog track.

"Those people in black were thieves!" Isobel said. "And it looks as if it's down to us to stop them."

The film crew were very keen on filming diamond thieves at work, although they weren't sure about Isobel's idea of stopping the theft.

The diamonds were on display in an old courthouse that was being used as a heritage centre. Isobel, the presenter and the film crew went there. They saw an open window at the back of the building, and they went inside.

The diamonds were lit up in a glass case. Isobel went over to it. "This puts the collection of buttons in the shade," she said.

The thieves were standing completely still over by the wall. They thought they'd been caught, but the presenter just carried on speaking to the camera as he always did. He said, "The colours of theft are invariably dark. Its canvasses are dimly lit and its brush strokes are light. It's a still life of blackness. But if you look closely there's a symphony of silent life..."

The film crew filmed him, and they took no interest in the thieves, who moved towards the camera when they became more confident.

Isobel knew it was down to her to stop the theft. She saw a cardboard sign that said 'Diamonds!' and she had a pen in her pocket. She came up with the idea of writing a cue card for the presenter, something about how crime doesn't pay and they'll end up in jail. But the presenter would never say something like 'Crime doesn't pay and you'll end up in jail'.

She remembered the man waiting outside the cinema. She thought he'd be articulate enough to write the sort of stuff the presenter would say.

She left the building and ran to the cinema. He was still standing in the same spot, holding the rose and talking to himself. She said she wanted him to write something about the futility of stealing diamonds, and he said he was perfectly qualified to write about futility.

She brought him back to the old courthouse, and they went in through the window. The presenter was interviewing one of the thieves about the aesthetics of theft. The man with the rose wrote the following cue card on the back of the sign: "Theft, like all human activity, is eventually swallowed by the darkness it initially thrives on. Lured by bright lights, destroyed by a candle burning out, doomed to a pointless life in prison..."

He moved closer to the light of the diamond display so he could see what he was writing, and when one of the thieves saw his face she took off her balaclava and said, "Dan!"

He dropped the cue card and said, "Imogen!"

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here? You were supposed to meet me outside the cinema."

"I thought that was tomorrow night."

"No, it's tonight. Or earlier this evening."

"I'm really sorry. I got my days mixed up."

"That's okay." He picked up the cue card and crossed out what he had written. He wrote: "Theft is most definitely not pointless. Every human activity has a point. Stealing diamonds has its own distinctive beauty."

Imogen screamed and ran away when she realised she was on camera without her balaclava and Dan had just said her name. The other thieves ran after her, and Dan followed them with his rose. "I got you this rose," he said.

"It doesn't matter anyway," the camera man said. "There's no film in the camera."

The presenter looked into the camera and said, "The semantics of theft are bereft of wallpaper."

They all looked at his shoes for subtitles to translate that, including the presenter himself. The camera man filmed the shoes.

After a few minutes, Isobel said, "Let's go and look at the buttons again."

They filmed the buttons, and the film crew enjoyed it much more this time. It was a nice way to end the day after the excitement of the diamond robbery.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been rehearsing for a part in a play. It's just a small part. He's playing an explorer who was thought to have died in the Arctic, but he returns and says, "Someone put the kettle on." They cut that line to make it easier for the moose's head. At first he was supposed to play a moose's head, but they gave that role to a man who works in the chemist. It'll involve a brief absence from the wall over the fireplace, but I think he'll enjoy the change.

Pickhead and the Syllables

A small stream flows through the field behind the garden. It's nice to sit amongst the trees near the red brick wall and listen to the sound of the flowing water. My great-grandfather once came up with a plan to divert it into the garden, but he gave up on the advice of a leprechaun. He was always afraid of offending the little folk. Leprechauns stopped him from going to numerous dinner parties at his mother-in-law's house.

My uncle Ben once ended up managing a punk band called 'Pickhead and the Syllables'. He wasn't entirely sure how it happened (it had something to do with a card game and a hole in the wall), and if he had been aware of what was going on, it wouldn't have gone on. Managing Pickhead and co was the last thing he wanted to be doing. Nearly everything they did descended into violence, apart from their music. Ben thought their songs were so bad that he considered the ensuing violence to be an ascent. Songs like 'A Piece of a Swan' made him long for the fight at the end. He thought their name was ironic, given their preference for single-syllable words.

One day he watched them throw marbles at each other. That became violent after about two seconds, and he knew he couldn't put up with this for much longer. He remembered when he was hiding in an attic with some friends of his. One of them was called Siegfried, and he smoked a pipe, but he didn't like it. He held the pipe as far away from himself as he possibly could. Siegfried didn't like a lot of things, and he always looked for ways to avoid them while still retaining control.

Ben wanted to keep the band as far away from himself as possible and still retain control over them, which would allow him the freedom to do other things, like hiding in attics.

There was an old house near where Ben lived. It was hidden amongst the trees at the bottom of a hill. No one had lived there for nearly ten years. Ben came up with a plan to keep the band walking around the house for a few hours.

He told Pickhead and his band-mates that the house was haunted. He gave them a tin opener and he told them that it was found by a ghost who lived in that house. He suggested that they give it back to the ghost.

He was surprised at how easy it was to talk them into returning a tin opener to a ghost. He left them in the hall of the old house, and he closed the front door. It was dark, and they couldn't see the other end of the hall. They walked very slowly. The drummer held a box of screws. "Ben said to throw some screws at the ghost if we meet him," he said.

"How are we going to give back the tin opener if we have to throw screws at him?" Pickhead said.

"Why don't we just throw the tin opener at him?"

"It depends on what sort of a ghost he is. We might just have to fight him."

They all nodded.

Ben was hiding in an attic. At first he was relieved to get some peace from the band, but he got bored in the attic. He liked the way he dealt the band. It showed a real flair for management, and he thought he shouldn't let that talent go to waste. If he could manage an act that avoided regular violence, he wouldn't have to hide in attics so often.

The first act that came to mind was a harpist called Avril. She thought violence was wrong. When she wasn't playing the harp she was skipping barefoot through fields and picking wild flowers. He went to see her playing in a nearby field.

He asked her if he could be her manager and she said, "That's just what I need right now. My last manager left because someone buried his foot in the sand, and it just upset him. He needed to spend some time by himself."

"Well spending time by myself is the thing I want to get away from."

Ben's niece, my cousin Jane, was in the field too. She was with her friend, Claudia. As they listened to Avril play, they ate cream crackers. Claudia had won a biscuit tin full of cream crackers in a raffle. A man called Joe said, "Can my weasel have some of your cream crackers?"

"No."

"Or just one then?"

"Where's your weasel?"

"He's... He's waiting in the car. I gave him a puzzle to play with."

"The cream cracker isn't really for your weasel, is it?"

"No really, it is."

Back in the 'haunted' house, the band were listening to a cupboard in the kitchen. They thought they heard a noise from it. They all turned around suddenly when they heard footsteps behind them, and they were just about to throw the tin opener and the screws when they saw a woman standing there, dressed all in white.

"Are you a ghost?" Pickhead said.

"No, of course not."

"Are you an angel?"

"No. Not really. Well, sort of. What are ye doing in here? It's a beautiful day outside.

"We're supposed to return this tin opener to a ghost. Our manager told us to stay in here."

"I can manage ye outside the house. When I say 'boo', that means ye should stop doing what ye're doing, especially if ye're doing something to someone's feet, and when I say 'buzz', that means... ye should just continue what ye're doing to someone's feet."

In the field where Avril was playing, Joe left Jane and Claudia, and he came back a few minutes later with a sheet of paper. "My weasel finished the puzzle," he said.

He held up the sheet of paper. It was covered in lines drawn with blue and yellow markers. Jane and Claudia looked at that without saying anything.

Avril sang as she played the harp. Every time she played she became immersed in the songs, and she always came to believe that she was gooseberry jam.

When she got to the end of the song and looked up, she saw Jane and Claudia eating cream crackers. She felt threatened by them, being gooseberry jam. She ran away screaming.

"It was your weasel's puzzle that made her run away," Jane said to Joe.

Avril went to a nearby farm owned by some friends of hers. They own copper pipes that say 'moo', and lots of glasses of milk, and blue plastic chairs. Spending time here always reminded her who she really was and what she wasn't, even though the copper pipes were partly responsible for the confusion in the first place. She loved the blue plastic chairs, the glasses of milk and the pipes. They made her forget about herself and becomes immersed in the world around her again, a world in which she was looking at a blue plastic chair.

She retured to her harp in the field, and she was just about to play another song when Pickhead and the Syllables arrived with the angel. Her name was Triona.

Tension filled the air, but for once it didn't emanate from the band. Avril and Triona had known each other for years, but they were always fighting. They fought over everything. Their latest dispute was about which one of them owned someone else's weather vane.

When Triona saw Avril she said, "Buzz, buzz."

The band moved towards the harpist. They knew they should do something to her feet, but they weren't sure what. Almost everything they did involved voilence, but that was normally directed towards each other. They couldn't attack a woman. They wondered if there was something non-violent they could do to her feet, but non-violence wasn't really their area of expertise.

They stopped when Avril held up a copper pipe. She smiled a menacing smile, or maybe it just looked menacing because of the way she held the pipe. This sort of thing was more in the band's territory. Being hit with a pipe was something they could understand, but it didn't solve the problem of what to do to her feet.

Ben was getting ready to go back to his attic and forget about his career as a manager, but Joe's weasel sorted it all out. When he arrived, Avril was afraid of him because he kept moving towards her feet, and she was barefoot. She'd gladly have hit the band with the copper pipe, but she didn't want to hit the weasel. She threatened to hit the band if they didn't keep the weasel away from her. Normally they would have enjoyed being hit with a pipe, but the idea of being hit by a barefoot woman scared them. It was the fear of the unknown. So they kept the weasel away from her feet. The weasel enjoyed the challenge. Joe said, "You need to give him some sort of a puzzle to keep his mind occupied."

Ben started managing the weasel and Triona too, and there was a permanent state of harmony between the four acts. Not that Ben did much in the way of managing. He spent most of his time hiding in the attic. Avril was happy just playing the harp in the fields and running away, while the band and the weasel kept each other occupied. It kept them out of trouble. Triona taught the weasel what 'buzz' meant, so he'd keep going for Avril's feet. He wouldn't need to know the meaning of 'boo'. She was always excited at the prospect of the weasel getting at Avril's feet, even though he was always foiled by the band.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves anything to do with Vikings, so we got him a Viking helmet. He enjoys wearing it, even though the horns are superfluous, given the fact that he already has antlers. I suppose that's why he likes the Vikings. They're beings with weapons on their heads, like himself. That's probably why he looks on me with such disappointment at times.

A Song in his Head

I cleaned all of the panes of glass in the glasshouse. A lot of dirt and dust had accumulated since the last time it was cleaned. My grandfather used to grow strawberries in there. My grandmother said it was just an excuse to talk to his left knee about the strawberries, or to the strawberries about his left knee, probably the latter. He didn't get on with his left knee. He said it was down to 'political differences', but he used that same euphemism to explain why a goat ate a pair of driving gloves.

My cousin Gary kept whistling a tune one morning. He couldn't get that song out of his head, and he couldn't get rid of his headache either.

It was a song he heard in a ditch, so there must have been someone else in the ditch. He couldn't remember much about the ditch because of all the alcohol he'd consumed, hence the headache on the morning after.

He tried to remember what happened on the night before. He was at a party at his friend Susanne's house. She was in a dance group that consisted of happy and sad dancers. The sad dancers wouldn't be very helpful when it came to creating a party atmosphere, but the happy ones would more than compensate for them.

Susanne had also hired a cowboy to help create a good mood. He's laughs almost all of the time, as long as you pay him every five minutes, otherwise he'll play sad songs on the harmonica, and tumbleweed will roll by.

The cowboy kept pointing at Susanne when he laughed, but he wasn't actually laughing at her. He just wanted to say something about her nose.

She refused to pay him, and this killed the atmosphere at the party. Even the happy dancers were sad. The sad ones were happy, in their own way. They just didn't show it.

This went on for about an hour, but someone eventually paid him and the party got going again. It was wilder than ever, to make up for lost time.

Gary remembered talking to Wendy, one of the dancers. She told him about a man who kept asking her to marry him and she kept saying, "I don't think so." She got some firemen to say 'no' for her, and they said they'd let him down gently.

Wendy composed a little theme tune for herself, and Gary remembered her singing it to him. He was horrified by the thought that this could be the song in his head, because that would mean he was in a ditch with Wendy. The man who kept proposing to her wouldn't like that, especially if the fireman were unable to tell him she didn't want to marry him.

Gary needed to hear Wendy's theme tune again, to see if it was the same as the song in his head. He found the dancers on a street, and he said hello to Wendy, but she said, "Shh," and put a finger to her lips.

The dancers were all standing completely still as they listened to Whispering Dave. Gary listened in too. Dave said, "Language is to be envied. Days in Spring are days in Spring. Winter is light blue and full of cold metal surfaces. An afternoon of buying shirts and putting them in boxes and thinking about shirts while they read Shakespeare, and being depressed. I envy them too. I envy words that float away like bubbles. I don't envy the cowboy just because he appeared on TV with Flunkey the Zebra..."

"Did he just say that the cowboy appeared on TV with Flunkey the Zebra?" Wendy said.

"I think he did," Susanne said. "Let's go and ask the cowboy if it's true."

They found the cowboy upside down in a barrel, with his feet sticking up in the air. They got him out and Susanne said, "Is it true that you appeared on the Flunkey the Zebra Show?"

"I don't know. Maybe a little money would help me remember."

Susanne paid him and he started laughing. Through the laughter they heard Flunkey's name, and he tried to communicate through hand gestures, but he failed. At the end of the five minutes he said, "Yes, I did."

Gary finally got a chance to ask Wendy about her song. She was only too happy to sing it for him. She sang, "I'm Wendy and I know it and you'll know it too, when you've heard my little song. You can't go very wrong, with Wendy and her little song. That's me and my song, and my feet that dance and dance, and frighten little ants..."

She was one of the happy ones. This wasn't the song in Gary's head, and he was relieved.

Gary hummed the song for them, but they didn't know what it was, and they didn't know where the ditch was either. Susanne suggested that they ask Polly, because she was at the party too and she doesn't drink.

When they went to Polly's house, her sister, Stacey, was making cakes for nightingales. Polly kept saying, "You..." and pointing at Stacey. What she meant to say was, "Why are you making cakes for nightingales?"

Stacey left the house with a cake in a box. Gary asked Polly about the ditch, but all she could say was, "She..." and point at Stacey.

"Maybe this means we should follow Stacey," Wendy said.

They followed her to a ditch, and Gary was sure it was the one he had been in on the previous night. She entered the ditch through an opening near a gate. Gary, the dancers, the cowboy and Whispering Dave followed her in.

The ditch was full of paths and clearings, and a few tunnels too. They came across Stacey in a small clearing. She was sitting on a bench with a man called Adrian, who said, "Ah, ye're back again."

Stacey made the cakes for all of the birds and animals in the ditch, but this was just an excuse to meet Adrian, and the cakes were really for him too. She said she was 'making cakes for nightingales' because it sounded more romantic than 'making cakes for mice'.

"So what are you doing in the ditch," Gary said to Adrian.

"I'm just... It's a bit like..."

"For the cake," Stacey said.

"That's right. We're here to feed the nightingales. And the... And all the birds. There were these two birds at home and... The twin birds on our mantelpiece got into the washing machine, and they seemed a bit dazed when they got out. So... I gave them a towel, but it was like talking to the wall when I was explaining that they'd catch cold and so forth. They said they'd have some tea alright, annnnd... I was having trouble with my circular saw..."

"Are you sure it doesn't have anything to do with the whiskey still that's been set up in this ditch?" Gary said.

"No, no, no. It's the birds, and the cake, and the circular saw."

"Right. Do ye ever come here just to sing songs?"

Adrian told Gary about their friend Anneka, from 'Anneka and the Stupids'. People always thought Anneka was in a band, but she was really just a dress-maker. There were no Stupids. Adrian and Stacey pretended to be her backing band, not that a dress-maker would need a backing band, but her name suggested that she did, and she's been much more successful as a dress-maker since she acquired the band. It makes sense of the name.

They wrote their own song, and Gary asked them to sing it. It went: "The twin birds on our mantelpiece, they both got into the washing machine, and they seemed a bit dazed, very dazed when they got out. I gave them both a towel..."

It was the song in Gary's head alright. He wished he had Wendy's song up there instead. Stacey tried to sing along too, but she didn't know most of the lyrics. It hurt Gary's head. He felt a need to forget it.

He interrupted them and said, "How much for a glass of whiskey?" And the party got underway again.

The moose's head over the fireplace thinks I'm trying to patronise him when I explain things to him with glove puppets, and he's dead right. I have to do something to compensate for the way he looks down on me when I play chess or Scrabble. Yesterday I explained democracy to him using two glove puppets called Pat and Mick. He looked down on them too.

Turtles

It's the perfect weather for eating ice cream in the garden, talking to birds or swinging tennis rackets. I haven't been swinging the tennis racket at anything in particular. We had a ball once. I swung at that and then we didn't have a ball. I suppose I wouldn't find tennis so boring if there was something there to hit and someone there to hit it back.

My cousin Charlie was walking through the park with a woman called Jennifer one summer day. Birds were singing, kids ran in circles after butterflies. Charlie and Jennifer walked with a spring in their steps, smiles on their faces. "Look at the sky," Charlie said, "and the dogs wagging their tails. Is that a bird, hello little bird."

The bird nodded his head.

They walked through the city streets, where people in multi-coloured clothes smiled and nodded. The mannequins in a shop window waved at Charlie and Jennifer as they walked by. The headlines in the newspapers all said 'Up!'.

An hour later Charlie walked back down those same streets, alone and depressed. The people on the streets were wearing dark brown clothes and dark glasses. The sky was grey. The newspaper headlines said 'Down'. The mannequins looked sad too, apart from one, who looked as if she lost her keys. The bird in the park shook his head.

It had been a perfect day with Jennifer until she introduced him to her fiance, and Charlie's world fell apart. He went to see Aunt Joyce. He liked listening to her talk about things as she worked in the glasshouse. He was always adding to a mental list of her best quotes, lines like 'Maybe she's born with it or maybe it's just something she strangled'.

He told her about his day. Joyce knew Jennifer's family, and she told Charlie not to give up hope. She thought Jennifer was unhappy with her fiance, Harry, because he's thick.

Some people who look after dolphins once said something must be blocking the light in Harry's brain, and Jennifer always reminded him of this because she thought that people who look after dolphins would have more authority than the man who breaks people's gates, who said he was a genius.

Joyce said they could easily bring about a split between Jennifer and Harry if they could make him look stupid and make a mess of things, and then have Charlie save the day. Her first idea involved a speedboat, but then she thought there was no need for something on such a grand scale. Something very small could be enough to make Jennifer see the light and leave Harry. A lightbulb came on over Joyce's head when she thought of turtles.

Jennifer often got Harry to look after her niece's pet turtles on Saturday afternoons, while she went shopping with her sister and her niece. This wasn't as easy as it looked, for Harry anyway. He could have managed one turtle without any trouble, but two made things more complicated. Jennifer tried to make it as simple as she possibly could for him. She said he just had to count the turtles every so often, and as long as there were two of them, everything was fine.

There was one other thing he had to look out for. There was an owl that lived in the trees behind the house. He liked sitting on the shoulder of a scarecrow because he liked scaring crows too. He also liked playing with the turtles, but Jennifer was afraid of letting the turtles play with the owl. "Don't let them play with the owl," was the one other thing she said to Harry.

Aunt Joyce called around after Jennifer had gone shopping with her sister and her niece. Harry was watching a match on the TV in the living room. The turtles were in the kitchen. Joyce had a box full of turtles, and she let them loose in the kitchen.

The next time Harry came in to count the turtles, he got to seven before he realised something was wrong. He counted fifteen in total. They were all over the kitchen. As he leant over the table to remove a turtle from the window sill, another one bit his tie and held on. He found two of them in the sink.

At first he was worried he had done something wrong, but then he thought he didn't need to worry about them at all if there was fifteen and there only needed to be two. He could watch the rest of the match without having to count them every few minutes.

He only returned to the kitchen when Jennifer came home. He was expecting to find the place crawling with turtles, but he couldn't see any. Joyce had removed them.

"Where's the other turtle?" Jennifer said. One of them was clinging to his tie.

"They were here the last time I checked," he said. "There were at least fifteen when I counted them then."

"Fifteen?"

"Oh yeah, at least that."

Jennifer looked as if she was thinking of what the dolphin minders said. "You just had one thing to do," she said. "One thing, and you got it wrong. It was just counting two turtles and you counted fifteen."

"At least that."

That's when Charlie arrived. He was supposedly there to collect his aunt. He was holding a turtle and he said, "I found this turtle with an owl. It looked as if the owl was trying to start a fire."

He might have just rescued a dolphin, the way Jennifer was looking at him. It was enough to make her realise that Harry wasn't the man she should be spending the rest of her life with. She left the house with Charlie, and the sun came out again. The birds sang and people in bright clothes whistled as they walked down city streets. The mannequins in the shop window looked happy again, even the one who had looked as if she lost her keys, because she found her keys.

The moose's head over the fireplace is backing Italy to win the World Cup. That's just my interpretation of his facial expression. Other people say he's supporting France. They're just reading what they want to see into it. But that's just my opinion too, as they keep pointing out. They also say that as a result of my opinion there's a hole outside the back door, but that's just their opinion.