Sugar

It's the end of August, and autumn is near. The garden is getting ready for another spectacular show. The wife's aunt seems to be getting ready for a show too. She's singing Kurt Weill songs again. She says things like, "And he whispered to me, Agnes..." She doesn't know who Agnes is.

My cousin Isobel likes to know how many times she'll have to use her head each day. If it's more than ten she'll have to lie down for a while.

Aunt Joyce called her on the phone one day and said, "This counts as an instance of you using your head."

"I'm just going to lie down for a while," Isobel said.

After her rest, her friends, Joe and Paul, called around to see her. Joe had stolen about fifty satchels of sugar from a restaurant. He hid them in his jacket, but he was worried about getting caught. After leaving the restaurant they met Debbie, who's a fashion designer, and she was wearing her latest style, which was lots of different layers of clothing and hats. She was wearing at least three coats (she couldn't remember exactly how many). This provided plenty of pockets and hiding places to hide the sugar.

He had hidden about twenty of the satchels on Debbie when he saw saw two men approaching. Joe thought they must be from the restaurant. "Let's split up," he said to Debbie. "I'll meet you later at the old stone bridge."

Isobel went with them to meet Debbie, but there was no sign of her at the stone bridge over a stream. She had met a man in a department store, and he was covered in clothes too. This common ground provided the perfect way to start a conversation. His name was Kevin. He said he woke up in the morning wearing all these clothes, and he was afraid to remove them. There were pieces of string hanging from his clothes. "Sweets fell out when I pulled that one," he said, "and the one near my shoulder opened a box, and a white mouse came out, but I stopped pulling them when this one made a bin explode."

While Isobel, Joe and Paul waited at the bridge in the early evening, Debbie and Kevin were on the dance floor of a ballroom. There were very few people there, and the others were all over fifty. Debbie and Kevin couldn't get close to each other because of all the clothes. They just leaned against each other and slowly moved from side to side to a slow waltz.

She remembered the meeting at the bridge, and they both went there. Isobel, Joe and Paul had to leave the bridge when they saw the two men again. They ran away through the fields, and they managed to lose the two men, but they got lost themselves too. They asked a scarecrow for directions, but he didn't seem to know where he was.

Isobel said to Joe, "I think you should hide the rest of the sugar on the scarecrow."

"That's a great idea."

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," Isobel said, "but I'm afraid I won't be able to use my head from now on."

Joe started putting the sugar inside the scarecrow's coat, but the scarecrow objected. "I really must object to this. This is most unwelcome. Most, most unwelcome, and I really must object."

"Yeah well there's not a whole lot you can do about it," Joe said.

After hidding the sugar they walked back the way they came, and they saw the two men again. This time they didn't run away.

When they met, one of the men said to Joe, "You seem to be running away every time we see you."

"I'm not running away now."

"Where's the glasses case?"

Joe was going to say, "It's not hidden on the scarecrow," because he thought they were going to ask about the sugar, but he was intrigued when they mentioned the glasses case. He was going to say, "It's hidden on the scarecrow," just to get rid of them, but he thought they'd think he was just trying to get rid of them, so he said, "It's not hidden on the scarecrow."

"Right. We're going to look in the scarecrow."

Isobel, Joe and Paul met Debbie and Kevin at the bridge. Joe wanted to find out about the glasses case. Isobel was the smartest person he knew but she couldn't use her head then.

If she'd listened to her aunt earlier she would have known that the glasses case was stolen from Joyce's friend, Kathleen. There's a small lock on the case. Kathleen kept a valuable antique watch in it. She thought that no one would think to look in a glasses case, but the lock gave the game away.

Joe decided to ask the second smartest person he knew: Poirot. He eats ice cream and spends his days spinning around. He spends most of the time spinning very slowly, so he won't get dizzy. This is what he was doing when they arrived, and they weren't sure if he was listening to them. He looked bewildered every time he came around to face them.

"We could ask Sherlock Holmes," Paul said. "He jumps up and down and does a trick with balloons."

When the two men searched the scarecrow, they found the sugar and they thought that Joe was smarter than they gave him credit for. The scarecrow was full of anti-Joe sentiment. "I objected most emphatically, but he completely ignored my feelings. And he doesn't like either of you. He said you smelled of ugly rabbits."

Sherlock Holmes was washing his dog, who was proving to be a bit of a handful, so Holmes was unable to jump up and down or do anything with a balloon, not that that would have been of much help anyway.

They went back to the fields, where they met the two men again. One of them said, "You picked the wrong time not to run away. Give me the glasses case."

"I never even heard about the glasses case until you mentioned it."

"Then why did you send us to the scarecrow?"

"Because I wanted to find out about the glasses case, but I failed. I just stole some sugar."

This made sense to the two men.

Isobel looked up at the sky, and they all looked up too because that was all that was left to do. Debbie couldn't resist pulling a string that hung from Kevin's coat. She'd been looking at it for over half an hour. She pulled it and the glasses case fell out. No one else noticed. She was about to tip-toe away with it, but she couldn't resist pulling another string, and this one made a phone ring somewhere in Kevin's coat. Everyone looked at Debbie.

One of the two men took the glasses case from her, but they needed the key because they were afraid they'd damage the watch if they forced the lock. They wondered which string they'd need to pull to find the key. They were worried that something else would explode. They decided to wait until Isobel could use her head again, and they looked up at the sky in the meantime.

When all the stars were out above, Isobel was ready to use her head again, and she knew exactly which string to pull. "Pull the one by his left elbow," she said. Debbie pulled it, and when nothing happened, Isobel said, "We just have to wait."

They waited for ten minutes until Kathleen arrived with the police. The two men ran away. "Did you know that that string would do that?" Debbie said to Isobel.

"I have to lie down now," Isobel said.

The moose's head over the fireplace can distinguish between the sound a glass clinking off a whiskey bottle and off a wine bottle. His eyes light up when he hears the whiskey. Not that he can drink it any more, but he seems to like the sound of it, and he loves looking at it too. I find it difficult to imagine a situation where he could have developed an appreciation of the taste of whiskey, even when he had a body. But he seems to have developed an appreciation of chamber music somewhere in his life, so anything is possible.

Gary's Watch

I found an old metal sign that said 'Trespassers will be prosecuted'. There was a painting of a swan on it. The swan looked devious, and he was smoking a cigarette. I don't know if the swan was meant to frighten trespassers or if the trespassers in mind were swans. It was probably the latter if my grandfather was involved. He didn't get on with swans. Whenever he lost an umbrella he blamed it on a swan, and apparently he had good reason for that. He was less convincing when he accused a fox of scratching his records. It was unlikely that a fox would have such good taste in music.

My cousin Gary met some friends of his in the pub one evening, and after a few drinks and a long blur he woke up at home on the following morning. He couldn't find his watch, and he tried to remember taking it off on the previous night. He knew where a horse was, but that didn't help much.

He found a woman holding a hair dryer in the kitchen, but the hair dryer wasn't plugged in. She didn't seem to know where she was, so he thought it was unlikely that she'd know where his watch was.

In the hall he found pieces of a jigsaw. He put them in his pocket and he called around to see his friend, Irene. He asked her if she'd seen his watch. She was looking at fish in a tank to ease her hangover. She didn't like looking away from the fish, and she didn't like having to think about things. Instead of concentrating on Gary's watch, she tried on lots of different pairs of shoes, because shoes normally jog her memory. In her white shoes she remembered dancing in a red room. "I'm sligtly scared," she said.

She also remembered seeing a gold watch on a white table. On the previous night they had gone to a house after leaving the pub. Gary decided to return to this house to see if they had a white table, or his watch. He asked Irene if she'd like to come along.

"Can we look at clouds on the way?" she said.

"We can."

All of the clouds looked like fish.

There was no white table in this house, and his watch wasn't there either, but there was a white filing cabinet. Irene kept opening and closing one of the drawers, just listening to the sound. It had the same effect as looking at the fish or the clouds. She found more pieces of the jigsaw in the drawer. The picture started to emerge: it was a mouse holding a placard.

They tried to remember what had happened, and they went through the evening step by step, but they stopped when they got to the bit where their friend, Anthea, showed them her new engagement ring.

They went to see her, and they asked her who she was engaged to. This was the point at which she realised that she couldn't find her engagement ring and she couldn't remember the name of the man she was engaged to. "He's the man with the nose," she said, "and the eyes. And shoulders."

Gary asked about his watch, but she didn't remember seeing it. She said she'd go with them on the search for the watch, in the hope that she'd find her ring along the way, and that this would remind her of the name of the man she'd marry.

They found more of the jigsaw at Anthea's house. They could make out a few of the words on the placard, and it seemed to be a Marxist slogan.

They wondered where they should go next. "I know where a horse is," Gary said. "But I don't think that would be of much help."

They went to see the horse anyway, but he just rolled around on the grass in a field. "I did say that this wouldn't be much help," Gary said.

As they were walking back into town, they met a man with a nose, eyes and shoulders. Anthea couldn't avoid meeting him. She thought she could hide the fact that she couldn't remember his name, but she couldn't hide the missing ring, so she told him about it.

He took the ring out of his pocket and put it on her finger again. He didn't notice that she was nervous about not remembering his name because he was nervous about her remembering the night before when she threw the ring at him in an argument, but she didn't notice this because she was nervous about not remembering his name. They were both happy to focus their attention on the search for the watch.

Gary suddenly remembered something. "There was a woman holding a hair dryer in my kitchen!"

They went back to his house, and the woman was still there, still holding the hair dryer, which was still unplugged.

Gary asked her about his watch, but she told them about Anthea's argument with her fiance. It started with a debate about what a willow tree looked like. He said he knows willow trees because his map once blew away and got stuck in one, but the only feature of the tree he could remember was that it had a map stuck in it. He said she was describing a mountain ash, but the only feature of a mountain ash he could remember was that they had umbrellas stuck in them. "To be honest," the woman with the hair dryer said, "I thought you just made that bit up. But it started to get very heated after that. Mentions of mothers and sisters didn't help. There was something about a squirrel in a traffic cone too. And then the ring was thrown and the engagement was called off." When she stopped talking she tried to turn on the hair dryer, but it didn't work.

"I remember now," Anthea said to her fiance. "You said you'd be better off asking a squirrel hiding in a traffic cone for directions rather than ask me."

"You said you'd have to hide in a traffic cone if you married me."

"I would. And I will. Because I won't." She threw the ring at him.

"That's what your directions are like," he said.

Gary found another piece of the jigsaw on the floor. The word 'lightswitch' was on it. This reminded Irene of the red room. "I think we should go there," she said.

"But where is it?"

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

They went to Irene's house and she put on her white shoes. "This way," she said.

They all followed her. Anthea and her former fiance were there too. She was afraid she'd lose the moral high ground if he found out that she didn't know his name, and she was hoping that someone would say it.

Irene led them to a dark corridor in the basement of a building. She opened the door to a long red room. There was a bouncer in here. He said you needed red socks to get in, but he seemed to be talking to himself. They listened to him for a while. He said, "She was a ballet dancer, I think. A ballet dancer? Yeah. There's no way she was a ballet dancer. No, she was definitely a ballet dancer. I remember her quite clearly, dancing her head off long into the night, but her feet still knew what to do. Have you let the chipmunk out of your head again? If you mention the chipmunk once more..."

His argument with himself was starting to get tense, so they left. They went through another door, which led to a bigger red room. There was a billiards table with a red cloth in there.

Anthea's former fiance looked very nervous in this place. He tried to hide when a woman in a red dress walked by, but she noticed him. "Hi Sam," she said.

He was terrified of what Anthea would do to him, but she just said, "Sam! That's your name!"

"Wait a minute," he said. "You forgot my name."

"I know. I'm really sorry. Now it seems really obvious, but I just... I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I'm sorry about everything I said last night."

"Let's just forget about that."

"Agreed." He put the ring on her finger and they kissed. He wanted to get out of there before the woman in the red dress returned, but a man in a white suit came into the room and said, "Ah! Ye're all back again. Welcome back again."

Gary saw his watch on a white table. "Can I have my watch back?" he said.

"I'm afraid not. You lost it in a game of cards."

"Yeah, I think I remember something about that now."

After a brief silence, the man in the white suit said, "It's my birthday today."

"Happy birthday," Irene said.

"Thanks."

"Have you got many presents?"

"A few... If someone gives you fish on your birthday, what does that mean?"

"I don't know. I suppose it means they think you like fish."

"I suppose so."

"Maybe you can help us with this jigsaw," Irene said. She took all of the pieces of the jigsaw from her handbag and arranged them on the red carpet.

Gary wanted to create a distraction so he could take his watch. He noticed that Sam was looking around nervously. Gary thought it had something to do with the woman in the red dress, so he went to find her.
He left the room, and he found her in a corridor that was slightly darker than the other rooms and corridors. He said to her, "Sam has been talking about you all the time. Saying how great you are and what great things you say and do. And it's his birthday today too."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

She went to Sam, kissed him on the cheek and said, "Happy birthday."

Gary had hoped that Anthea would react to this, but she was staring at the mouse in the jigsaw. She hated mice, especially ones around her feet. But the man in the white suit did react. He said to the woman in the red dress, "You completely forgot about my birthday."

"Yeah well you said you had to dig a hole on my birthday."

"I did."

"How come I've never seen this hole?"

As they were arguing about this, Gary went over to the table and put the watch in his pocket. They all went to see the hole then. It was in a field that was full of long grass, wild flowers, rocks and moss.

"It's not much of a hole," the woman in the red dress said to the man in the white suit.

"It depends on how you'd define much of a hole."

"It'd be more of a hole than this, much more."

When Irene asked what time it was, Gary took the watch from his pocket and looked at it, and everyone looked at him.

Anthea's delayed response provided the necessary distraction. She said to Sam. "She kissed you!"

Sam said, "Yeah well... At least she remembered my birthday."

"I did remember. I even got you a present. It's... a gold watch. I left it on the table at home." She smiled at Gary and gave him the thumbs up. Everyone looked at him again.

Something fell into place in his mind at just the right time. He said, "Does anyone else remember a ballet dancer who painted her toenails black? She could move like a piece of paper on the air, or a flower petal in the air flow from a red hair dryer. I remember her saying the words, 'You can shout until Tuesday and whisper all day Sunday, and you can hear your own eye lashes...' Her words trailed away to a whisper."

"She was the one who gave me the fish," the man in the white suit said.

"I'm sure she said something about a Marxist mouse," Gary said. "He fell in love with a mouse who liked pretending to be a light bulb. They walked in the snow. She used to switch herself on when it got dark and she'd talk for hours, about horses and carriages, or different types of timber, or woodwind instruments in an orchestra and their timbre. She had a great understanding of apples, for a light bulb, or for a mouse. He used to play the recorder. She said she liked it, although he thought she was just humouring him. He could play a bell too."

They all wanted to go back to the jigsaw in the red room, and they hoped to find more pieces. Gary slipped away as they walked back. He tried to think of something to say to the woman with the hair dryer. He had a feeling that he'd need some excuse. 'It's my birthday today' was the best he could come up with. But he might not need to say anything if he just plugged in the hair dryer.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves smoking his pipe. I don't know where the smoke goes. It doesn't come back out again, so it probably goes up the chimney. I knew someone who could smoke a cigarette and make the smoke come out of his ear. He said the smoke sounded like people speaking French. He often did his trick during conversations with French people (he didn't actually speak French himself). He said they 'understood' him. They probably came to some understanding of him alright. They never stayed talking to him for very long.

Deckchairs

I walked around the garden with the dog. There's a scarecrow in the field behind the garden. His name is Gilbert -- so says the sign hanging around his neck. The dog is suspicious of him. The crows don't seem to like him either. He wouldn't seem so intimidating if animals could read the words 'My name is Gilbert'.

My Aunt Joyce was organising a garden party at her summer house by the sea. It was due to take place on a Saturday afternoon in July. My cousin Ted and his wife, Anne, were helping her with it. Anne bought twenty deckchairs, mainly because she liked the coloured stripes, and she offered them to Joyce to use at the party. Anne went to the summer house on the evening before the party, to help with the preparations. She asked Ted to take the deckchairs out of the shed to air them.

He set them up in neat rows of four in the back garden, and he counted them. There were twenty of them alright. He counted them from the first to the last and back again, and there were twenty both times. Then he counted the amount of chairs in each row and the amount of rows. He already knew that there were four rows, and he could have guessed that there were five in each row, which there were. He went inside to the mirror and he counted himself. One. He could have guessed that too.

He went back outside and counted the deckchairs again. This time there were twenty-one, but he counted the cat as well by mistake. If anything he should be counting the cat amongst himself, he thought. He took the cat inside to count it, just for the sake of standing in front of the mirror with the cat and saying, "One, two. Two." He wished he hadn't done that because the cat objected to being counted. Ted never liked that cat. It was just a stray that Anne started feeding. He wanted to get a dog, but Anne objected because it would frighten the cat.

He brought the deckchairs to Joyce's summer house on the following day. He arranged them around the garden, with the help of William, who was one of Joyce's neighbours. He told Ted that he could detect things with his ears. "And not just words or sounds," he said. "I just get a feeling in my ears at times and I know something's going to happen."

The party was okay, but Ted preferred the sort of parties where it didn't matter if more of your drink ended up on your clothes than inside you because there was more than enough to gill your clothes and your insides and come back outside. Making it come back out would be a major faux pas amongst the sort of people Joyce had invited.

After everyone had left in the evening, Ted and William went around the garden to collect the deckchairs, but they couldn't find any in the garden. The chairs were spread out all over a field between the garden and the sea. There were people sitting on all of the chairs. "I should have seen this coming with my ears," William said.

They tried to get the people on the chairs to move, but they took notice. Even though the cat would dislike this, Ted disliked it too, just not as much as the cat would.

They listened in to the conversations as they walked around the field. "If we were Neil Armstrong, do you think we'd ask ourselves about the glass?"

"I'd wonder why there were so many of me."

"Some people will say it's just glass and other people will say it's glass and still more people will say it's glass too, and if you get even one person who says, 'I don't know what it is, but I like it,' then that's enough to say, 'Aha! Get out of my sight.'"

William suggested treating them as one person, specifically as Neil Armstrong. "We just have to lead them away with something that Neil Armstrong would like."

As they thought about what Neil Armstrong would like, a man in a white lab coat walked by. He was smiling broadly. He had fuzzy hair and he was holding a test tube. "I've just discovered electricity," he said.

The people on the deckchairs didn't even look up at him. Ted said, "I was going to say electricity, but..."

"Biscuits," William said. "That's what Neil Armstrong would like."

They got a woman called Sophie to walk through the field with a plate full of biscuits. The people on the deckchairs stopped talking when they saw the biscuits. They stood up and followed her. She kept on walking, and she forgot about the people following her when she saw two blue butterflies. She loved their movement through the air, and she didn't even realise that she was following them.

She stopped when the butterflies split up. She didn't know which way to go until she saw three people who were carrying a small row boat. They were carrying the boat above them, with their heads hidden in its hull. She wanted to see what they looked like, so she followed them.

They put the boat into the water in the harbour, and Sophie saw that they were three women who all looked alike. She remembered all of the people who were following the biscuits, and she looked around. There seemed to be many more people in the group then. She said, "Look, a spider," and pointed behind them. She was going to run when they turned around, but their gaze never left the biscuits. There really was a spider there.

She didn't know what to do with them, so she just stood there and watched the three women row the boat around the harbour. They were following four men in another boat.

For half an hour the two boats went around in circles or figure eights. Sophie suspected that something was wrong when the men returned to the harbour and ran from the boat. The women were just behind them, and one of them had a baseball bat.

The men merged into the crowd. Sophie didn't like the idea of someone getting hit with a baseball bat, so she moved away and the crowd followed. The three women had trouble finding the men while they were constantly moving.

Ted and William counted the deckchairs in the field. When they got to the final one they saw that it was occupied by someone in a panda costume. A panda wouldn't be one of Neil Armstrong, so that made sense to Ted and William.

The person in the costume was Jenny, a friend of William. A local Amateur Dramatics Society were putting on a play about the life of Socrates. It was performed entirely by trousers. When Jenny started asking William about his trousers he became paranoid about people taking them, but she only wanted to know how many pairs of trousers he had. He was constantly thinking about them. When he saw people walking with plastic bags he said, "If my trousers are in those bags..."

"I'm no longer interested in your bloody trousers," Jenny said.

But secretly she was. She wanted to steal a pair of his trousers, just to annoy him. She tried to think of the most ridiculous plan she could come up with, just to annoy him even more, and that's why she was wearing a panda costume. The plan failed because William had hidden all of his trousers, apart from the ones he was wearing -- he was afraid he'd get arrested if he hid them. She was hot in the panda costume and she needed a rest, so she sat on the deckchair.

"Is there any particular reason why you're sitting here?" Ted said to the panda.

Jenny did her best impression of a panda when she said, "I don't know. I suppose it's the chair. I've always liked chairs. They're much better than the ground, when it comes to sitting anyway. The ground would be better for standing. Some chairs you can stand on, but not these. You're normally better off going for the ground if you want to stand. But I suppose that depends on the type of ground..."

The man who discovered electricity was still walking through the fields. The smile never left his face. When he met a woman outside her cottage he said, "I've just discovered electricity."

"Do you want me to give you this fire extinguisher?" she said.

"No. I don't know."

"I could follow you around with the fire extinguisher, just in case."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

She was constantly on guard with the fire extinguisher. She very nearly let it off when she heard a buzzing sound, but it was just a wasp. She found it difficult to stay by his side when they joined the crowd following Sophie and the biscuits, and this made her more nervous.

Ted and William were still listening to the panda. "Could a surfboard be regarded as ground? If you just want to stand somewhere, a surfboard wouldn't be your best option, but if you're looking for something more exciting than standing, then you should definitely consider a surfboard..."

The stars were out above. Ted remembered Sophie. She had yet to return with the biscuits, so he went looking for her. William and the panda went too.

Sophie was moving slower in the darkness, but she kept moving to help those people avoid being hit with a baseball bat. She walked along the coast near the lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper saw people moving in the darkness below. He shone the light on them. The sudden burst of light made the woman with the fire extinguisher panic. She sprayed foam over the people all around her, and she kept spraying because she didn't know where the electricity man was.

In the shock of the sudden bright light and abundance of foam, some of the group started to panic, and some started to fight. The violence spread. This is exactly what Sophie had been hoping to avoid. The only people who weren't fighting were the three women who were in the boat. One of them still had the baseball bat. She gave it to one of the men they were chasing and said, "Here's your baseball bat. Thanks for letting us use it."

But they all started to enjoy the fight in the foam. So did the lighthouse keeper. He thought it was better than drink, although he couldn't rule out the possibility that drink was at least partly responsible for the scene on the ground below. It was a proper party then, not like the too-proper garden party at Aunt Joyce's house. The music started. Drinks were passed around and Sophie gave out the biscuits.
The panda ran from the crowd with William's trousers, followed by William without his trousers. But he enjoyed that too, and he was relieved that he didn't have to keep watching his trousers. If his trousers had to be removed, he'd have preferred if it wasn't done by a panda, but he was delighted when he realised it was really Jenny.

Ted thought his job was done, whatever his job was, and he returned to the house. When he got back to the field there were twenty cats on the twenty deckchairs, and he remembered that his job was collecting the deckchairs. If they were dogs he could easily tempt them away with biscuits, or if they were Neil Armstrong. He decided that his job was counting the deckchairs, and he enjoyed that. He counted the cats too.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the start of the Premiership season on Saturday. He can't wait for the All-Ireland hurling final next month. It's Cork against Kilkenny again. He'd give his right leg to see Cork beat Kilkenny to win three in a row, if he hadn't already given his right leg to some other cause.

Peas

I removed the weeds from the stone steps at the back of the garden. The steps lead nowhere, and they're hidden amongst the trees. My grandfather built them to get away. I don't know what he was getting away from. He probably knew what he was getting away from, but he didn't seem to know where he was going to. Wherever it was, he spent a lot of time there.

My cousin Craig fell in love with a woman called Denise. She was an enigma to him, mainly because she once asked him if he'd ever seen to video to 'Vogue' by Madonna. He answered by pausing for a few seconds, then pointing at a very large bell and saying, "Look at that," which was probably more enigmatic than what she said.

He was going to buy her chocolates, but he thought he should get her something more enigmatic. He came across a small statue of a goat in a second-hand shop, and he bought that for her, but his friends said it wasn't enigmatic at all -- it was just ugly. He gave it to a friend of his, Bobby, because Bobby had once thrown his shoe at a goat. The goat wouldn't give it back.

Craig tried to think of the most enigmatic thing he could give her, and he came up with the idea of buying her a Chihuahua, but again his friends made him see sense. They said it was the least enigmatic thing he could possibly get her.

He was still trying to think of what to buy one day when he had lunch with Denise and her friend, Eileen. Denise said, "There was a storm the other night, and I said the word 'peas' just as lightning struck. I emphasised the word 'peas' too. And the thunder and lightning emphasised it more than I ever possibly could."

After they left the cafe, they listened to a traditional band who were playing on the street outside. When they walked on again they didn't notice they were being followed. As they were walking down a quiet alley they heard a voice behind them: "Turn around slowly."

They turned around quickly and saw a man pointing a gun at them. They stared at the gun. He looked at them without saying a word. Denise said, "Peeeeeeas," and she started laughing.

"Where's the goat?" the man with the gun said.

"I gave it away," Craig said.

"I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"No really, I gave it away. It's just a goat."

"A goat with diamonds inside him. Who did you give it to?"

"A friend of mine."

"Lead the way."

The thief walked behind them, with the gun in the pocket of his jacket. Denise was still laughing when they got to Bobby's place. In the front garden, a Saint Bernard was eating a hub cap. "Now that's an enigmatic dog," Craig said.

They found Bobby around the back. He was hammering an old window frame. Craig asked about the statue of the goat, and Bobby said he gave it to a magician. "There's no way he'll give it back. I threw it at him."

The thief took out his gun and said, "I won't be throwing this at him."

They went to see the magician, but he looked more like a wizard. He was icing a wedding cake, which wasn't something you'd expect to see a magician or a wizard doing. The small plastic couple on top of the cake looked surprised.

The thief asked him where the statue of the goat was and he said, "I gave it to a woman. I found her hiding behind my curtains."

"You'd better find her again," the thief said.

They looked behind all of the curtains, but she wasn't there. They nearly got lost amongst the curtains in his study. They could hear the sound of a stream, and there was moss on the ground.

They eventually found her in the shed. She was wearing a tennis outfit. "What are you doing in my shed?" the magician said.

"I'm playing tennis with Annabel. She's hiding in a van."

"Where's the statue of the goat?" the thief said.

"I gave it back to Craig."

"Oh yeah," Craig said. "I forgot about that."

"Well where is it?"

"I gave it to Ray."

Ray was standing near the pond with his girlfriend, Maeve. She looked into his eyes and said, "Surely you... surely..." She loves the way she says 'surely' so she says it a lot. He loves the way she doesn't finish sentences, not like his last girlfriend. Most of her sentences finished with 'off' and started with a word that started with F. There was rarely anything in between.

When the thief arrived with his growing band of hostages he took out the gun, and he asked Ray where the goat was. Ray took a long drag from his cigarette and said, "I gave it to Olivia."

They went to Olivia's house, but there was no one there. Eileen said, "She normally walks her dog at about this time."

"We'll just have to wait," the thief said. "Just stay calm and don't do anything stupid."

Eileen said to the thief, "I just swallowed a fly. Can I go home?"

"No."

"I have a doctor's note for it." She showed him the note.

"Okay, you can go," the thief said. Eileen left.

"I'm getting tired of waiting," Ray said.

The thief pointed the gun at him and said, "Are you feeling lucky?"

"I'm feeling stupid."

"Go on then. Go away and see what your doctor has to say about it."

"Maybe I will."

"Go on then."

Maeve said, "But surely..."

For a few seconds the only sound was of Denise laughing. Then Craig said, "She's got a point there."

No one said anything until Eileen arrived with the police, who arrested the thief. "I really did swallow a fly," she said.

Denise finally stopped laughing and said, "Peas." Craig thought he'd need to buy her something even more enigmatic than a Saint Bernard eating a hub cap.

The moose's head over the fireplace appeared in a painting of a bowl full of apples. The wife's aunt painted it, and even though the moose's head is in the background, he's far more interesting than any of the apples. There's a glint in his eye, and the viewer's eyes are immediately drawn to him. He was wearing his favourite scarf when she painted him. The apples do nothing. She could paint them wearing hats and scarves and fake beards and they'd still be doing nothing.

The Play

A landscape gardener had a look around the gardens the other day. He wasn't there in a professional capacity, but he couldn't help pointing out possible improvements. I didn't go around the place suggesting possible improvements to his wife. I don't know what place I'd have to go around to be in a position to make comments on his wife. I suppose I'd just have to walk in circles around her. I'd gladly do that. In fairness, there isn't much room for improvement there. But it's different with gardens. They wouldn't be any more enjoyable if they were perfect, and the process of perfecting them wouldn't be enjoyable at all.

My cousin Ronan's Amateur Dramatics Society were staging a play with the help of a guest director who once directed on the West End. Their first rehearsal took place on a Saturday morning. They were all slightly confused by the play, and a few hours in the director's company didn't help.

He was more confused than anyone. He eventually said they needed to break free from the confines of the theatre and let this play figure itself out naturally. So he sent them all out to go wherever they felt they should go and let this day write itself.

While the rehearsal was going on, a man wearing a red tie and glasses with thick black frames was walking around an office filled with morning sunlight. He was looking for something as he said to his secretary, who was following him around, "Marjorie is coming clean... about... I don't know about the toad... and the wallet... but fortunately... everything... it was a grey blazer..."

He walked up a spiral stairs, with his secretary just behind him. "I was able to buy my trousers back with some pears and... if everything was so... all these apostrophes..."

Most of the cast from the play headed for the fields after they left the theatre. The man playing the ghost of Rodney-now met the man playing ghost of Rodney-then.

"So who's Rodney?" Rodney-then said.

"He's... him," Rodney-now said, and he pointed at a man fading into the shadows of the trees near an old shed. They went over to him, but he just stood there, completely motionless. "Or maybe he's the ghost of Rodney-soon."

Ronan was playing the real Rodney, and when he arrived he went straight over to the man standing in the shadows and said, "I'm going to punch you."

Ronan slowly rolled up his sleeves. He didn't seem to be in a rush to punch him.

"Why do you want to punch him?" Rodney-now said.

"Because he put my wallet into a tin of paint."

"But how could Rodney-soon do something in the past? If anyone did it, it was Rodney-then."

"I didn't do anything," Rodney-then said.

"Everything you do is something you did."

"Okay," Ronan said to Rodney-then, "I'll just punch you instead."

Rodney-then took a step back and said, "Let's just think this through before we do anything rash."

Rodney-now said, "If anyone should be punching him, it's me. I'm Rodney-now."

"I'm Rodney," Ronan said. "Not 'now' or 'then' or 'someday soon'. Today, and for the rest of my life. Or until this play ends."

"You can't punch a ghost," Rodney-then said.

"That's right," Rodney-now said. "If anyone can punch a ghost, it's another ghost. So I should do it."

"Let's not do anything rash," Rodney-then said, and took another few steps away from the other Rodneys. They followed him, and so did the man in the shadows.

The man playing Gregory Tar was holding an ashtray when he left the theatre. He didn't know why he had the ashtray. He knew it had something to do with what the director told him about a DJ on the radio who used to smoke as she presented her show. The director said he could hear the smoke. Gregory listened very carefully without ever comprehending what she said, and he thought he could hear the smoke, but he wasn't sure.

He was with the Rodneys, but he wandered away from them as they argued about who'd get to punch Rodney, and which Rodney they'd punch. He stopped to look at three sailors saying goodbye to three women. He stared at them, and he forgot about the ashtray. He looked up at a bird in the sky and when he looked down again the sailors were gone. They had given the three women presents of silver pens.

He went over to the women. One of them had a table lamp. She told Gregory that she was going to give it to the sailor, but she forgot about it. As she spoke he paid more attention to the movement of her lips than what she had to say. He thought she said, "Everything goes away and comes back with this table lamp. I live in a marsh and sometimes I like to feel as if I'm sinking."

The director was standing in the fields with two Kathleens and an Anthea. He said, "Pieces of tennis fall out of me every so often and I beat people at tennis and they say, 'What's going to fall out of you next?' And I don't know."

The breeze carried his words away over the fields and he wondered who'd hear them, but only Anthea and the Kathleens heard.

Gregory was still with the woman who had the lampshade for her sailor. They stood under a tree on top of a hill. She talked about the places she'd been to with the sailor, and the fights he got into. "It was under this tree that he told me about all the things he's made from paper, which came as a surprise after he'd spent so long telling me about all the fights he's been in. A pleasant surprise. He made paper men and paper cats and dogs to go with their matchstick equivalents, and he never once set any of them on fire, which was another pleasant surprise."

Gregory still focussed on the movement of her lips. In his mind he heard the words: "It's all done with puppets and smoke, and most of the music is in the air most of the time. It's a mystery why the light goes and the garden stays when you press the buttons."

They watched seven Rodneys walk through the valley beneath them. The real Rodney, Ronan, was confused.

The director was a mile away with two Kathleens, an Anthea and a Marjorie. He was listening out for his own words, and he didn't pay any attention to Marjorie when she said, "I was painting the ground or the floor or a toad, and one minute I thought I was holding a jam jar or a toad and then I picked up the paint brush and I was holding someone's wallet all along..."

The man with the red tie ran towards her, followed closely by his secretary. He was holding a sheet of paper. "It's okay!" he said, and stopped to get his breath back. "You didn't... I have proof... You... whatever you did with the wallet... you didn't... You were... You didn't do it because... their beards... at the time..."

Two women walked by. They were looking at silver pens. The director said, "Ye're going the wrong way for the tea house."

"Oh. Thanks." They turned around and walked back the way they came.

"That fell out of me."

Gregory and the woman with the lamp were on the banks of a stream. "He can be so romantic," she said. "He sang to me here, in the light of the stars."

He thought she said something about a balloon.

The director saw an isolated pub on the side of a hill, and he headed in that direction with two Kathleens, an Anthea, a Marjorie, a band of Kevins, ten glove puppets pretending to be owls and twenty-two Rodneys.

They all went into the and saw people whose eyes said 'surprise!' or 'I'm surprised' or 'these eyes are my windows'. Ronan didn't take any notice of this. He was still concentrating on who to punch and who should punch whoever should be punched. It was getting more complicated all the time. After hours of thinking about the problem he said, "Well if Rodney-then, Rodney-now, Rodney-stupid, and the eight Rodney-bikers or the Rodney-new didn't do it, who did it?"

Marjorie said, "I think this is all because of what I did when..."

The man with the red tie and the black glasses stood up and said, "No no. No no no no no. You didn't. I have proof." He held up the sheet of paper.

"Well if she didn't put my wallet into a tin of paint," Ronan said, "who did?"

"Ah, well, y' see." The man with the red tie coughed to clear his throat, and looked at the sheet of paper. "It's, it's, it's all down to... when I was a boy... I think from all my... everything, so to speak, says to me... it was Rodney."

Everyone looked at Ronan. He said, "It's..." And then he ran from the pub. Everyone in the pub followed him. They chased him through the fields.

"That's what was confusing me," the director said.

Gregory was still with the woman, and she was still talking about the sailor. They danced in a field near the pub, in the light of the moon, with the lamp on the grass nearby. She was starting to run out of things to say, and Gregory was determined to kiss her during the next pause.

But before he got a chance, the sailor showed up. "Right," he said to Gregory, "I'm going to punch you now."

He slowly rolled up his sleeves, and this gave Gregory a chance to escape. Ronan ran past him, and a few seconds later Gregory was able to disappear into the chasing pack.

The woman with the table lamp was left alone with the sailor. "I got you this table lamp," she said.

The director was trying to direct the chase back towards the theatre. Now that the play had resolved itself, it was time to confine it again, but Ronan didn't like the idea of returning to a confined space.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed his role in a play. Everyone agreed it was a strong performance. He was very convincing as an explorer. He was much more convincing than the man who was playing the moose's head over the fireplace, who kept looking back and forth as the other actors spoke, something our moose's head never does when he's over the fireplace. And he looked shocked when the moose's head (the explorer) returned from the Arctic after being presumed dead.