The Mouse

The dog gets transfixed by the Christmas lights in the garden. He often stares at them for hours. We have to get the wife's aunt to sing to him to break him out of his trance. Her singing can be detected by dogs within a half-mile radius and they howl along with her. Nothing else can divert his gaze from the lights. When a jockey walked right past him he took no notice. We were too busy commenting on how the dog took no notice of the jockey to wonder why the jockey was walking through the garden.

My uncle Harry always enjoyed experimenting with electricity. After every fire he'd stop and think about how to replace the apparatus that had been destroyed. The word 'apparatus' suggests he knew what he was doing, but the garden gnomes had a better understanding of what they were doing and they only rarely started fires.

When his wife, Aunt Bridget, told him there was a mouse in the house, he said, "Right. We'll electrocute the bugger."

His first plan involved a car, a player-piano and the inevitable fire, but the mouse escaped with his life.

His second plan was to distract the mouse with a play that would be performed by puppets. One of the puppets was a mouse, and this one would go into the audience and electrocute the real mouse. But the real mouse left his seat half-way through the performance.

Nicola wrote a review of the play, and Harry read it in the paper. It said that the second act lacked focus, and too many story lines were allowed take centre stage. The review also criticised the set, and it said that too many characters caught fire. Harry threw the newspaper into the bin.

Harry invented a new dance while he was trying to come up with a new plan. He performed it at a local village concert and it got a great reaction. He did his dance on local radio too, but his big break came with a TV appearance. He performed the dance with eight young women dancing behind him. They were dressed like him and they copied all of his movements. They were known as the Harriets.

Harry blew up his car in his next attempt to kill the mouse. Under normal circumstances, the neighbours would have said, "Harry must still be trying to catch that mouse," and that would have been the end of the matter, but because of his celebrity status he was featured on the front page of many newspapers under headlines like 'Dancing Harry Blows Up Car'.

Harry was furious, and he blamed it all on the mouse. He was more determined than ever to catch it, so he enlisted the help of the Harriets. They were still copying all of his movements around the house. When he lit his pipe, they lit theirs.

They split up into three groups and they searched the house for the mouse. Bridget didn't like the idea of eight young women who were devoted to her husband and she hated having them around the house. She enlisted Nicola's help to get rid of them.

One of the Harriets was afraid of paper monkeys. She liked real monkeys, but she ran away screaming from the paper ones. Her fear arose from an incident when she was attacked by 150 paper monkeys. They didn't really attack her -- they just fell on her head.

She was with two other Harriets as they searched upstairs. She ran away screaming from a calendar because she thought it was a paper monkey. When her torch lit up the photo of a squirrel on the calendar she didn't stop to confirm her first impression that it was a monkey -- she just screamed and ran, and the other two did the same because they assumed she had a very good reason for screaming and running, even though all they had seen was a calendar with a squirrel on it.

Bridget and Nicola got rid of another group with the shadow of the puppets on a wall. The three Harriets saw the shadow of a mouse happily walking towards the shadow of a man. But suddenly the mouse jumped in the air and went straight for the man's face. He fell over and tried to fight the mouse off, but the Harriets missed this because they were already running away and screaming.

The two remaining Harriets were with Harry. All the screaming made them nervous, so all Bridget had to do was burst a balloon to make them run away as well.

Harry started drinking after they left. Bridget and Nicola put on a puppet show in which the mouse was portrayed as a friend. He saved the life of someone just like Harry who was conducting an experiment with electricity.

Harry read the review of the show in the paper the next day and it was very positive, so he decided to spare the life of the mouse. Although if he had kept trying to kill the mouse, the chances are he'd have killed himself first.

The moose's head over the fireplace got a few sweaters as Christmas presents. He wouldn't wear them even if he had a body. I wish I didn't have a body so I could avoid wearing the reindeer sweater I got. But if I didn't have a body I wouldn't have anything to hold my legs, and I wouldn't be able to wear the bright green trousers I bought in the sales. They bring a whole new dimension to the area of leg-ownership. My legs are clearly much happier. Sometimes they just run around in circles.

A White Christmas

The weather fronts bringing wind and rain have finally decided to side-step the country, leaving us with freezing fog instead. I've been putting some Christmas decorations up around the garden. The lights illuminate the fog. Some of the neighbours have gone for very elaborate decorations. One of them has seven plastic dwarves riding the reindeer on the roof. Dopey is facing the wrong way. Another neighbour has hired a harpist to play in her garden.

My cousin Charlie was staying at his family home at Christmas. One evening, a few days before Christmas Day, Mrs. Door-Happily from down the road called around with a present. She was with her daughter, Yvonne, who was about Charlie's age. They all spent a few hours drinking and talking in front of the fire, and it was after midnight before Yvonne and her mother got ready to leave.

But when they opened the front door the world outside was almost invisible beneath a blizzard. Yvonne and her mother couldn't leave, so they had to spend the night with Charlie and his family.

Charlie and Yvonne stayed up for another hour. When the electricity went they had nothing to do but drink in the candle light. Yvonne said, "Do you want to look at my contact lenses?"

"Okay," Charlie said. He spent half an hour looking at her contact lenses. The electricity was still gone in the morning, so Charlie passed the time by looking at her contact lenses again. They did this in the kitchen, and then they did it outside in the garden. He kept staring at her contact lenses even as three wise men crept through the field just behind the garden. One of them was a woman.

They passed by in the opposite direction later when Charlie and Yvonne were in the field, but neither of them took any notice.

Yvonne and her mother went home in the afternoon. The electricity came back on. Charlie turned on the TV, but there was nothing good on. He turned it off again, and all he could see in his mind was Yvonne's eyes. "I'm in love!" he said.

He went out to the garden, and he was planning on passing the time by looking at the mental image of Yvonne's eyes, but the Three Wise Men kept invading that image, and it annoyed him. He wondered why they'd be creeping through the fields, and he knew that the only way he'd get them out of his mind was by tying up that loose end. He needed to find out what they were up to.

He walked through the fields himself. He followed tracks of footsteps in the snow, and he eventually met some shepherds. They told Charlie that they were from the Nativity play in the community centre, and they were out looking for the Three Wise Men, who kept disappearing from rehearsals. The Wise Men were looking for a turkey.

The turkey had been a prize in a raffle in the pub on the previous evening, and it was won by one of Charlie's neighbours, Paul. On his way home through the fields he kept falling over. Everything looked easy after a few drinks but staying upright wasn't as easy as it looked. Normally he'd use his arms to help retain his balance, but they were occupied with the turkey. So he left the turkey near a ditch, and he was going to come back for it on the following day but when he woke in the morning the fields were covered in snow. He tried re-tracing his steps but he couldn't find the turkey. It was lost beneath a white blanket.

"The Three Wise Men just want a free turkey," one of the shepherds said to Charlie. "They won't give it back if they find it. If you see them around, let us know."

Charlie was able to relax after he found out why the Three Wise Men were in the fields. The loose end had been tied up, and he could get back to thinking about Yvonne's eyes. But it wasn't long before the image of the turkey appeared in his mind, and this annoyed him even more than the Three Wise Men. He knew he needed to tie up this loose end as well.

The Three Wise Men were searching all of the different paths Paul could have taken between the pub and his house. They'd been looking for hours but they hadn't found anything. Charlie wondered if Paul had some reason for a detour, so he went to the pub and started walking in the general direction of Paul's house.

It was late in the afternoon, and it was starting to get dark. On a hillside about a mile away he could see the light's of Mrs. Hennessy's house. Her father was always trying to 'accidentally' burn the house down because it was insured for much more than it was worth. He tried everything. At Christmas he used to cover the house in lights, most of which he bought from a man with an eye patch. He liked to think that the injury was self-inflicted in an electrical accident, and that this was an indication of how reliable the lights were. He was always an optimist. He just assumed that if he nailed five thousand lights to the house, at least one of them would cause a fire. His daughter continued this tradition. Her house was visible from miles away.

Charlie remembered how Paul was attracted to bright lights. He often just stared at lights. His mother used to make him wear sunglasses when he was young. He was the coolest kid in school, but he wasn't really cool -- he was just attracted to bright lights. The second coolest kid used to push Lego up his nose.

Charlie thought that Paul must have been drawn towards the house. He followed that path, and he kept an eye out for the turkey. The Three Wise Men were taking a similar route, but they were going in the opposite direction. They were looking down at the ground. Charlie could see a turkey shaped object beneath the snow up ahead of him, and the Three Wise Men were closer to it than he was. The stars were starting to come out. Charlie said, "Look at that star," and pointed up at the sky.

While they looked up, Charlie tip-toed to the turkey, picked it up and then walked away quietly. One of the Three Wise Men pointed up and said, "What, that one?"

Charlie returned the turkey to Paul and removed it from his mind. He was finally free to think about Yvonne. He imagined her in a Santa costume that became smaller and more transparent the more he thought of her. He needed to find her to stop those thoughts. And if actions resembled those thoughts he wouldn't feel guilty because at least she'd know about it and approve of it.

The moose's head over the fireplace was the star of the show in the Christmas pageant. The reindeer were played by ducks who started fighting with each other, and you'd think this would be the highlight of the show, but it was the moose's head who got the standing ovation. Sherlock Holmes was booed off the stage.

Roll the Dice

The theme of wind and rain is still prominent in this production of December. I suppose Nature has to alter the staging to keep us interested when we know where the plot is going. It's the most dramatic ending to any month, with Christmas and then New Year's Eve, and you never know if it's all going to be white. A white Christmas would be a clever twist after the wind and rain. We can always look forward to the ending even though we know that the only certainty is the hangover.

My cousin Albert was staying in a hotel once, and he often met a maid called Ruth. One day he told her she was too pretty to be working in a hotel and she said, "Yeah well I'm too thick to be a rocket scientist."

He started to fall in love with her, but he didn't know what to do about it. He tried stepping outside the door of his hotel room. At home things always started when he stepped outside the front door of his house. It was like rolling the dice. They'd come to a rest after a beautiful roll, little red plastic cubes with bright white dots drawing lines through the air before coming to their conclusion: two or four or seven or ten or whatever. Separate lines that come together at the end to make something beautiful. A four and a two is more beautiful than a two and a three, but that's not to say that three is ugly. Ruth would be two fours, which Albert believed to be more beautiful than a four and a two.

So standing outside the door was his throw of the dice and he hoped that the result would be dinner with Ruth, but he got two ones and nothing happened.

He remembered winning a TV in a competition he saw in the newspaper, so his second role of the dice was to read the paper. There was a rack full of newspapers in the hotel's lobby. He looked through one of them, but he saw no sign of a competition. He realised he needed to put more thought into this. Entering competitions wouldn't necessarily bring him any closer to Ruth anyway. He sat on a sofa in the lobby and read the paper, hoping that she'd pass by, but she didn't.

He needed to roll the dice again. Amongst the ideas he came up with were building some sort of a machine and buying her flowers. He decided to go for the latter idea first.

The numbers that came up in this roll left him standing in a boxing ring, facing an opponent who was a professional boxer, and he was much bigger than Albert too. The boxer was Ruth's boyfriend.

Albert wasn't worried at all about the fight until the ref said, "And no punching beneath the belt." Albert looked as if he'd just lost his plan.

He needed to roll the dice again. He could build a machine or run away. The latter was the only feasible option given the time constraints, but if he ran he could forget about taking Ruth out to dinner.

He was rescued by Ruth. She got into the ring with a spoon in her hand. The look in her eyes suggested she intended to use the spoon as a weapon. The boxer backed away. She chased him all around the ring. "I know about your affair with my tap dance teacher," she said.

Her friend, who was also a maid in the hotel, had told her about this. The friend was supposed to meet her boyfriend at the beach, but she was late. While he was waiting for her he saw a crab, and he couldn't help wondering what it would be like to touch a crab. He could never avoid acting on these thoughts if he was left alone for long enough, so he touched the crab and the crab bit him. A woman came over and helped remove the crab from his hand. It would only have been a matter of time before he started wondering what it would be like to touch her, but they never stopped touching while she examined his hand. They touched for longer than was necessary, and when she looked in his eyes he saw that she was thinking the same thing he was thinking. She couldn't avoid acting on those thoughts either.

They went to a quiet spot behind some rocks, and that's where he saw the boxer with the tap dance teacher. He felt guilty when he saw them. He remembered his own girlfriend. He left the woman who had helped him with the crab, but the real reason he left was that if his girlfriend found out, she could be more painful than anything guilt or a crab could do.

When he met her later she told him she was late because she missed the bus, and she missed the bus because as she was leaving the hotel she saw a newspaper on a sofa in the lobby. She put it back in the newspaper rack, and then she met a friend of hers. They started talking and she lost track of time.

The boxer was close to learning how painful his girlfriend could be with a spoon in her hand. He ran from the ring and left the building. "I never want to see you again," she shouted after him. Then she turned to Albert and smiled.

He said, "Your intervention is the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. It probably saved his life."

The look in her eyes suggested that love had erased all thoughts of hurting someone with a spoon.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to his role as Santa in the Christmas pageant. He's very believable in the role. I think it's because you'd expect the Santas in these things to look as if they'd just stumbled out of a pub, which would completely ruin the illusion, but the moose's head doesn't look like that at all. The people playing the submariners have been doing a lot of stumbling in the vicinity of various pubs. They say that's what submariners do on dry land, and they're just getting into character.

Blink

We've had rain and strong winds every day so far in December. Even when the rain stops, the garden isn't the most peaceful of places to be. The wife's aunt has become obsessed with bingo. She walks around the garden, pointing at things and calling out numbers. "A dog in a bucket, thirty-four."

My cousin Hugh never paid a great deal of attention to his own appearance, let alone the appearances of others, but his fiancee, Annabel, expected him to show a much greater interest in hers. She often used to ask him if her make-up was okay. He always said it was fine, and she got the impression that he wasn't even looking. On one Saturday she went for the 'prostitute' look in her make-up. She asked Hugh for his opinion and he said, "It's fine. Have you seen my sun glasses?"

She was just about to complain when her phone rang. It was a friend of hers who spoke about organising a party in her aunt's summer house over a bank-holiday weekend. Annabel was delighted to hear about the party, and she completely forgot about the make-up.

She went shopping with Hugh and she met some friends of hers. She was in a great mood because of the party. People stared at her, and no one said very much.

My cousin Jane met a sailor. She didn't know what to say to him so she whistled. He did a tap dance and it scared her.

She met Annabel and Hugh in a pub on that afternoon. The sailor was still with her, but she wanted to get rid of him. She saw Annabel's new look and she thought it would be the sort of thing a sailor would go for. Hugh was talking to the bar man, so Jane introduced the sailor to Annabel and left them alone.

Annabel got on very well with him, and Jane started to feel guilty about bringing them together. She thought of Claudia, her best friend. Claudia had started saying 'blink' when she blinked. She got into the habit of saying it every time she blinked, so she tried to get out of the habit of blinking. She tended to stare with wide eyes, and this frightened most people, but one man thought she was trying to seduce him. Jane got the idea of introducing Claudia to the sailor in the hope that the staring would be effective as a seduction technique.

She phoned Claudia and asked her to come to the pub.
Claudia had forgotten about her tendency to say 'blink' and she had stopped staring, but she just needed a reminder. Jane said to her, "And remember, don't say 'blink'."

Claudia's eyes widened.

Jane told Annabel about the make-up. Annabel's eyes widened too, and she left them. Then Jane introduced Claudia to the sailor, and she stared at him. It scared him, and he started whistling.

Annabel took off the make-up and she realised that Hugh had seen her looking like that when she was deep in a warm conversation with a sailor, and still he took no notice. She wanted to make him jealous.

She went back to the sailor. Claudia left to rest her eyes. The sailor was delighted to be back with Annabel and out of Claudia's company. Their conversation resumed.

Jane saw this and she tried to think of another way to split them up. So she got Claudia to stare at Hugh instead and then she went to Annabel and said, "I think Claudia is trying to seduce Hugh. It looks as if she's wearing him down too. He's staring back at her."

So Annabel went to Hugh and Claudia, and this left Jane alone with the sailor again.

The silence made her feel uncomfortable. She tried to think of something to say. She looked around the pub and she saw a painting of a mountain on the wall. "I've often wondered about mountains," she said. "It's not something I think about all the time. But occasionally I think about them and say 'hm'. Once I thought about something and said 'pancakes!'. And everyone looked at me, and that's why I forgot what I was thinking. I know I wasn't thinking about pancakes. Another time I said 'Richard Burton!' when I was looking at someone's carpet."

"I once said 'cheese' when I meant to say 'shoes'," the sailor said. "'I'll throw your effing cheese at the turkey.' That had an effect, but not quite the effect I was hoping for."

"I once threw cheese at someone. That had exactly the effect I was hoping for, but in hindsight I think I might have been better off choosing some other effect. I could have thrown her shoes at a turkey, but I liked the turkey. I could have just taken her shoes off and thrown them at something else I didn't like. Or I could have said, 'I'm only talking to the turkey from now on.' And then I could have told the turkey about how she can't sing and her head goes red when she tries, and given him the cheese."

"I once spoke to a doorbell. I told it exactly what I thought of it, but I thought I was talking to a man who laughed at my tie. I said, 'You think you're so big just because you met Boris Becker.' I did wonder why he was so small and why he emitted light."

"I once made a tie..."

Annabel had gone over to Hugh and Claudia. He looked at her instead of at Claudia, and he found the view more appealing. He said, "You look much better without make-up."

She smiled and said, "I knew you'd notice."

The three of them went back to Jane and the sailor, who were were kissing by then. When Claudia saw them she said, "Blink blink blink blink blink."

The moose's head over the fireplace has been to rehearsals for the Christmas pageant. He's playing Santa Claus. They managed to work the crew of a submarine into the story. The fact that Santa is a moose's head seems less odd when he's surrounded by submariners.