'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The Wish


The sky has been grey for the past few days, but we haven't had any rain. I've spent a lot of time looking at the sky, but I can't think of anything to say about it, other than that it's grey, so I've decided to write a poem about it. I'll try my hand at poetry, and if I lose a hand I can sit at the bar and tell tall tales of my poetry injury. "Bits of words are embedded in my leg. Part of a poem is stuck in my head, and the doctors say they'll never be able to get it out."


My cousin Albert went for a ride in a hot air balloon with a friend of his called Derek. The owner of the balloon told them not to spit over the side. They had never thought of spitting before he mentioned it. Neither of them wanted to spit, but Albert thought of meeting Davey on the ground later. They'd tell him about the balloon and the first thing he'd say is, "Did you spit on anyone?"


Davey once tried to spit on an ant, but the ant was too quick for him. It was like the Karate Kid trying to catch a fly with chop sticks.


Albert still didn't want to spit because the owner of the balloon would think he's more of a ball-point than Davey. Instead of spitting he dropped a coin into a lake, so when Davey asked if he'd spat on anyone he could say, "No, but I threw a coin at a man in a boat." He told the owner of the balloon that he was just making a wish when he dropped the coin.


When they met Davey later they told him about the balloon, and the first thing he said was, "What was it like?" He was obviously working up to the question about spitting.


Albert said, "It was like being a bird in slow motion, a bird with a huge red head that's filled with air."


"Are you describing an ex-girlfriend?" Davey said.


Albert loved the idea of having an ex that fitted that description. His own head would be full of beautiful memories. He liked the idea of having a fling with someone who was completely unsuitable for him.


Albert and Derek were going to meet some friends in the pub. On the way they stopped at Derek's house. He went inside to change his shoes and Albert waited outside. The sun was just approaching the horizon when he saw a woman walking towards him, seemingly in slow motion. She had red hair, and lots of it. 'Bountiful' was the word he'd use to describe it. 'Beautiful' was the only way to describe the over-all effect. She smiled at him. He rememberd the coin he dropped in the lake and the wish he had supposedly made. He hadn't wished for anything until he had thought of the fling with the red head. This could be his wish come true.


She said, "Hello, Albert." He wasn't able to say anything. She said, "You don't remember me, do you?"


"I remember seeing you..." He stopped because he didn't think it was advisable to finish that sentence with 'in my mind'. He finished it with a simple 'somewhere' instead.


"We met years ago," she said. "I'm Derek's cousin."


"Gillian?"


"I didn't think you'd remember."


"You've changed a lot since then."


"Well I was only fifteen at the time. And I was sunburnt. You said I looked as if I was applying for a job as a fire."


"Sorry about that. I still see fire when I look at you, but in a good way now."


"Have you ever applied for a job as a fireman?"


"I'd rather be an arsonist."


Derek went to the pub, but Albert and Gillian walked towards the banks of the river where they'd met years earlier. They were never stuck for things to talk about. He realised that her head might not be full of air, but there was a fire at the base of her brain. He told her the sun wasn't setting; it was retreating because she'd beaten it.


As they were walking next to a ditch in a field they saw a man in the next field. He was holding a shotgun and he wore a hunting hat.


"I hate hunting," she said. "We should put a stop to this. I'll distract him while you take his gun."


Albert thought she had the easier half of the job. She could distract at a range of two hundred yards, but he had no idea how he could take a gun from an armed man.


They crouched and crept along next to the ditch. Instead of thinking how to disarm the hunter, Albert was thinking of excuses not to disarm him. But as they got closer he recognised the man in the hunting hat. "That's my cousin Alan," he said.


Albert said hello and waved to Alan, who waved back. Albert and Gillian went over to him. "It's a grand evening for hunting," Albert said. "And by the way, you shouldn't do that."


"You were the one who wanted me to shoot a rabbit in the back."


"Yeah well I knew you'd miss."


"I've never shot anything."


"That's good."


"Why do you have a gun?" Gillian said.


"Because I heard that people were poaching fish from the river and I wanted to scare them off."


She smiled at him. Albert thought it was advisable to change the subject. He said to Alan, "Have you been able to get your hands on your father's memoirs?"


"No. He keeps them in his study, and his room is always locked."


Alan's father, uncle Harry, had always been writing in notebooks. He said he hoped to write his memoirs one day. No one ever asked him about it because they didn't take the threat seriously. The only thing Albert thought about it was that it should be pronounced 'memories'.


When Alan was in his teens he was always wearing wooly hats. He had a different hat every time Albert met him. Albert thought he looked stupid but the girls loved him. He wondered what his uncle would write in his memoirs about the hats. Probably something like 'He looks stupid but the girls love him'. Albert was looking forward to reading the memoirs because he expected it to be full of things like that. He had no idea that it would contain stories involving bar maids in broom cupboards. Harry wouldn't have needed a notebook to remember that, as long as it only happened once or twice. If it happened ten times, some of the details might be lost if they weren't recorded. If it happened fifty times, then it could just as easily have happened thirty times or seventy times. You'd forget about twenty encounters with bar maids in broom cupboards just as easily as you'd forget making toast.


Everyone was interested in his memoirs after he started writing them. It was rumoured that he had lived a wild life before he got married. His wife, Bridget, was desperate to get hold of them to make sure there wasn't anything too embarrassing in them. And if there was (and there almost certainly was) she could destroy them. She could allow one or two incidents with bar maids before they were married, but fifty would be forty-eight too many.


Alan never had to say much to the girls. They'd say, "Is that a new hat?" And he'd say 'yeah'. And then they could look at the hat, and this would be a perfectly good substitute for a conversation that included the line 'Do you want to go back to my place?'.


Albert wore a new hat once. A girl asked him if it was a new hat and he said 'yeah'. He felt that the ensuing silence was only standing in the way of a conversation that started with the question 'Did you have to kill a squirrel?'. It all came down to confidence -- that's the conclusion Albert came to. He couldn't see any foundation for Alan's high level of confidence.


Gillian said to Alan, "I like your hunting hat." Albert knew he needed to do something to halt the growth of the pro-Alan sentiment.


It was Alan himself who came up with a plan of action. He said, "I know how we could get the memoirs back. His study is upstairs. He often leaves the window open, and someone could easily get to it from a ladder. All we need is to keep him distracted downstairs, and Gillian would be perfect as a distraction. I'll introduce her to Dad and you can climb the ladder, get into the study and take the manuscript from the desk."


Albert didn't want to play the part of 'you' in the above script, but it would be the sort of thing that would impress Gillian, so he agreed.


The plan was that Albert would get the ladder from the shed just after Alan and Gillian went inside. Alan would introduce Gillian to his father and tell him she's interested in his opinions on forestry, while Albert would be entering the study upstairs.


This part of the plan went perfectly. When Albert made his way into the study he could hear his uncle talking about cutting down trees. He took the manuscript from the desk and left the room through the window at the side of the house.


As he was descending the ladder he heard the sound of screeching brakes on the road. It was a police car. They were just passing by when they saw him emerge from the window with something under his arm.


He hurried down the ladder and ran into the back garden. He headed for the orchard. He thought of the coin he dropped in the lake. The ripples had been spreading outwards all evening, and now they were crashing on the shore as waves.


But all wasn't lost. His knowledge of the terrain proved useful. His cousin Ronan had dug a hide-out at the back of the orchard when he was young. Albert knew where the hide-out's entrance was, and he hid there. Even in daylight it was difficult to spot it, and it was completely invisible in the dying light. He heard the police running by above.


Ronan had been using the hide-out again recently after he agreed to pose as Ghandi for a painting and then regretted it, deciding he'd rather spend time in a hole instead. He had left a torch in there, and Albert used it to read the memoirs.


There were no stories of bar maids in the bit he read, but he did come across a very interesting story about Alan. According to Harry, Alan once cried when a moth flew into the back of his head. This completely changed Albert's opinion of his cousin. The hats were probably an attempt to protect himself from moths. This gave Albert more confidence.


He left the hide-out when he heard the voices of Alan and Gillian. It was dark outside. He walked through the orchard, and he saw them standing on a lawn. They got a shock when they saw him emerge from the trees, but he remained calm. He oozed confidence as he made his way across the lawn. He thought he emitted a smell of pure calm as he told them about his encounter with the police (although if anything, the smell was of sweat, which would suggest the opposite of calm). Of course, it wasn't really an 'encounter', but Alan made it sound like one.


Gillian said, "When the police came back to the house they said you were too far away to be caught. But I knew they were just saying that to cover their inability to catch you."


"It was boring for me," Albert said. "I had to start reading to pass the time. I learnt some fascinating things about moths."


He gave the manuscript to Alan, who looked shocked. "I have to go," he said, and he ran back to the house.


Gillian and Albert were alone on the lawn. With his new-found confidence he translated the silence into the sort of conversations Harry used to have with bar maids, and he was proved right when they kissed for over a minute. When they stopped she said, "I have to go now. I'll be going back to Japan tomorrow. Maybe I'll see you again in a few years. Goodbye."


After she left, he said to himself, "So that's what it's like to have a fling with a red-headed woman with fire in her head." He smiled. He was glad he'd thrown the coin in the lake, although he'd never do it again.


The moose's head over the fireplace has a good appreciation of poetry. Reading my poems in front of him would be daunting. He'd know what it feels like to lose a hand too, having lost his body. The wife's aunt once read him her poem about a lamb and a man with a big moustache. She thought he liked the poem, but the look on his face reminded me of the way he reacted when I glued my hand to a banjo.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Treasure


Winter has started. The land for miles around was covered in snow on Monday. There's no point in spending so much time and money on the interior of a house, an interior that you're stuck with for years, when the exterior is constantly changing and yet always remains beautiful, and on top of all that, every so often it all turns white, without any effort on your part. That's my excuse for not picking up the things I drop on the carpet.


My cousin Hugh once walked along a narrow country road on a beautiful summer evening. He wanted to fill his mind with as many of the sights, sounds and smells as he could fit in his head. When he was young he used to fill his pockets with pebbles and look at them later. He threw the ones he didn't like at people he didn't like. Nowadays he collects memories and sensations, the sights, sounds and smells, and he goes through them again at home when he's sitting on his armchair.


The only problem with this is that he's stuck with the memories he doesn't like. Some memories are like smooth shiny pebbles (those are the ones he likes) and some are like ugly rocks (they'd be the people he doesn't like).


As he was walking down the road on this summer evening he met one of the ugly rocks. It was Killen, a man who lived about a mile away from Hugh's house. It was impossible to stop him talking after he started. He spoke slowly and relentlessly, like a frieght train going up a hill. The effort Hugh put into avoiding Killen had just as much urgency as he'd put into avoiding an on-coming train. He had climbed gates and jumped into ditches to get out of Killen's way in the past, but he had no time to get out of the way on this evening. He turned a corner and there was Killen.


After talking about his doctor and what his doctor said and what his doctor said he did and the way he said it and what they did to him anyway (all it really amounted to was that his doctor was angry about a defective DVD) Killen started talking about a woman who was staying with his next-door neighbour, and he used the words 'that actress in the ad where a spider steals her biscuit'. Hugh's subconscious took note of those words and it presented for his conscious mind an image of a beautiful woman walking in slow motion towards him. He enjoyed that image for a few seconds before he realised that it was only in his mind because of something Killen had said. He started listening then, and he discovered that the actress was staying with Killen's neighbour.


Hugh thought she'd be just the sort of sight he'd like to have in his mind, and possibly the right sort of scent too. She could be the smoothest and shiniest of all pebbles. He said he'd like to meet her, so they walked towards the house where she was staying.


Her name was Diane. She was just about to go for a walk with her friend, Monica, when they met her. She was certainly smooth and shiny. The sound of her voice was another welcome addition to the sounds he'd stored in his mind. She asked Hugh and Killen to join them on their walk, and they both agreed.


They walked down the road and they stopped at the bottom of the hill, at a small stone bridge over a stream. Diane told Hugh about a shampoo ad she'd just finished filming. "Smell my hair," she said to him.


The sound of those words was another welcome addition to his mind and so was the smell of her hair. But this was immediately followed by a very unwelcome sound. His fiancee, Annabel, had been driving by when she saw him smelling Diane's hair. She stopped and got out of the car.


The feeling of an engagement ring ricocheting off his face was nothing new to Hugh. The ring normally landed within a three-foot radius of his feet, so it was always easy enough to find. But this time she missed his face completely. It went to the right of his head and it landed in the field next to the stream.


"I'm sorry," she said. "That's the fist time I've ever missed."


"Don't worry. I'll find it."


Hugh went to see his cousin Charlie, who had a metal detector. They both went to the field and they searched for the ring with the metal detector, but they didn't find it. They only spent ten minutes searching for it because they forgot about the ring when they found a box full of old silver coins.


They didn't know what to do with the coins. They could bury them again and pretend they never found them, but they knew they wouldn't be able to forget about them. They were worried that if the coins were found in their possession they could be accused of theft, so they decided to hide them somewhere else. They went to another field and buried them near a tree.


It was dark then. They went to see a band play on a farm nearby. The farmer got a local punk band to play in an old cattle shed because they were cheaper than hiring someone to demolish the shed. Then he realised that people would actually pay to watch them, so he made a profit out of it. Some of the band's fans paid to listen to the music.


The gig started the punk revolution in the area. Almost everyone at that gig was inspired to pick up a sledge hammer and make music. Hugh had gone through his punk phase in his teens when he graduated from throwing pebbles to throwing stones. He out-grew that as well, but he still enjoyed the gig. Even Killen found that he had something interesting to say, and he wanted to express it by throwing bottles at a wall.


Hugh met Charlie again on the following day, and they came to the conclusion that the coins must have been buried there a long time ago and forgotten about. So they could claim the coins and they wouldn't be accused of stealing them.


They went to the tree to retrieve the coins, but when they dug up the ground, the box with the coins was gone.


Someone must have seen them bury the coins, and they suspected Killen. From his house he could see the field next to the stream. They thought that he must have followed them to the tree where they buried the box. He had arrived at the gig about half an hour after they did. He seemed unusually animated that night. At first they put this down the the influence of the music, but looking back it seemed suspicious.


They went to see him. He had definitely changed, but they couldn't tell if this was down to the influence of punk or to having recently acquired a small fortune. He was always on the lookout for things to throw bottles at, which was probably down to the music. But the next time they saw him he was wearing a gold medallion, and that wasn't very punk at all.


As they thought about what their next move would be, they went back to searching for the ring. This search lasted less than a minute, and again it ended without them finding the ring. Charlie moved the metal detector over the place they'd found the coins and it started to beep again. They dug there and they found the box of coins.


"Killen must have thought the same thing we did," Hugh said. "He was worried he'd be accused of stealing them, so he buried them here, the last place he thought we'd look."


"How can we be sure it was him?" Charlie said.


"There's only one way to prove it, assuming he's watching us now. And you can be sure he's watching us now if he buried the coins here."


They took the coins to the tree where they'd buried them the last time, and they buried the box in exactly the same place. They left the field. They waited on the road outside, and they looked over the ditch towards the tree. They expected to see Killen arrive with a shovel, and after nearly an hour of waiting the shovel did arrive, but it was in the company of Monica and Diane. Hugh and Charlie went into the field. "So it was ye who stole the coins," Hugh said.


"This isn't what ye think," Diane said. "This is really Monica's money."


"That's right," Monica said. "My grandmother gave the coins to my mother, and she buried them near the stream decades ago when my father became addicted to pottery." She started crying, and Diane comforted her. "She was afraid he'd find the coins and sell them to buy more clay. The coins have been buried there ever since. I don't want to have them in the house because they bring back so many bad memories."


"We're really sorry," Hugh said. "We had no idea."


"That's okay," Monica said. "I think it's time I sold them. It's the only way to draw a line under that time."


Monica and Diane left with the coins. Charlie and Hugh left too. When they got back to Hugh's place, Annabel was waiting. She asked if they had found her engagement ring. Hugh made the mistake of saying they'd been searching for something more important. She picked up a pebble and threw it at his face, but she missed. "I've never missed before," she said.


"That's what you said the last time."


When she picked up a stone, Hugh and Charlie ran away. They went back to the field near the stream to look for the ring. They met Killen at the bridge. They told him all about the coins and how they really belonged to Monica.


He said, "Her parents never lived here at all. She only moved into that house two years ago. She was brought up in Mexico."


"I was wondering why she had that accent," Charlie said.


"We've been swindled," Hugh said, but he wasn't too keen on trying to get the coins back because Monica and Diane were clearly more cunning than a man who was happy throwing bottles at things. "At least she let me smell her hair," he said.


The moose's head over the fireplace always enjoys listening to the wife's uncle, but I think even the moose's head has trouble believing some of his stories. The latest one involved a woman who could communicate with walls. He says she fell in love with him with the unanimous approval of her kitchen.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Ronan's Songs


I finally took down the Christmas decorations in the garden. The plastic reindeer are in the shed for another year. The wife's uncle says he knows someone who wanted to get huskies and call them after Santa's reindeer, but she got a Jack Russell instead and the Jack Russell ate part of her phone book.


My cousin Ronan has been going out with a woman called Audrey for years, and he's never approved of her taste in music. This wouldn't be such a problem if he had a car, or if she didn't have a car. But when he's in the passenger's seat of her car, the only thing he can do about the music is complain. He used to say things like 'This one makes my ears bleed' or 'I see dead people when I hear this song'.


But when one song came on the radio she turned up the volume and said, "I love this song. And if you say anything about your ears bleeding or you legs falling off, I'm going to stop the car."


He hated the song, and he tried to resist saying 'It sounds as if it was recorded right after the singer had serious brain surgery', but he couldn't. She parked the car at the side of the road and said, "Take that back."


"No, I don't think I will."


"Fine. We'll just wait here until you do."


"Fine."


So they waited. Neither of them said anything for a while. Ronan started thinking of his own musical taste, and he broke the silence when he told her about his teenage devotion to Pearl Jam. He had learnt to play the guitar, hoping to be like Pearl Jam, but there was only one of him. Even if he were Siamese twins there still wouldn't be enough of him. He dreamt of releasing an album called 'You Smell of Loneliness' because he once heard a woman say that to a dog. He would have formed a band, but none of his friends were band material, and then one day he realised that he was just like his friends. He overheard someone refer to him as 'one of that crowd who look as if they'd rather be learning things than playing strip poker with a stripper'. He thought it was just his friends who looked like that. He knew then that he'd never be even one fifth of Pearl Jam.


When Ronan told Audrey about this she said, "That's why you're so hostile to other music. Your need to be Pearl Jam was never resolved."


"Maybe you're right."


"There's an inherent apology in the way you faced up to that problem."


She started the engine.


"Don't dare drive away," Ronan said. "I never apologised."


She drove away.


"You have the worst taste in music ever," he said. "Howling dogs would disapprove of your taste in music."


"It's not you who's saying these things. It's your issues."


She never got upset at any of his comments after this, and that annoyed him. His comments became more hostile, but she just said things like, "That's it. Let it all out," which only made whatever was in him even greater.


When they were walking through a park one day they saw a man sitting in the shade of a tree. He was strumming a guitar. "Let's get out of here," Ronan said.


"Why?"


"I have only one rule to live by and it's 'Avoid men playing guitars under trees'."


"Just one? What about 'Thou shalt not kill'?"


"The existence of men playing guitars under trees means I can't accept 'Thou shalt not kill' as a principle to live by."


"What about women playing guitars under trees?"


"That's a different matter entirely."


"This is all down to the hostility inside you that started to bloom when you realised you couldn't be Pearl Jam."


"This has nothing to do with hostility."


"You've never even met the man and already you want to kill him."


"I don't want to kill him. I'm saying I might want to kill him if I actually met him."


"Well you're going to meet him, and you're not going to kill him because you'll see that he's really just like you or me. This is the perfect chance to get over your hostility."


Audrey dragged him towards the tree where the guitarist was, and as they got closer, Ronan recognised him. His name was Aaron, and he was in Ronan's class in school. Even Ronan and his friends looked down on him. He was the least likely person in the class to form a band or do something with a stripper.


So Ronan was shocked when Aaron said that he was a singer-songwriter and he'd released an album. He invited Ronan and Audrey to a gig he was playing that evening.


The gig was in a pub where a lot of folk musicians played. It completely changed Ronan's perception of folk music. For one thing (the only thing that mattered to Ronan) the place was full of good looking young women who were all over Aaron. Even the former classmates who did things with strippers would have been jealous of him.


This is what promted Ronan to pick up his guitar again and write songs. There was a slight grunge influence in his song about a blind Doberman, but most of his songs were very folky. One of them was called 'The Birds are our Children'.


Aaron told him about an open mic night at the pub where they had seen him play. Anyone could get up and sing. This seemed like the perfect place for Ronan to make his debut.


Or so it seemed until he got there and saw the audience. The picture he had in his mind was of an audience of young women who'd fall in love with a man who could play the guitar, but the pub seemed to be filled with their boyfriends.


He abandoned his plan to play a song about a goose and a boat-maker because it was just too long. It could last anything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour. Instead, he decided to play his song about being an eel because he could get it over with in less than a minute.


The audience were silent when he went to the microphone, but that didn't last long. The laughter began just a few seconds into his song, but he kept going because he knew it would be over soon. They laughed at the end of each line, which meant that at least they were listening to the lyrics.


Before he even finished the song he was looking for the nearest exit, but he didn't have to use it. The audience gave him a standing ovation and that's when he realised that they thought he was a comedy act. They demanded another song, so he played the one about the goose. He managed to get it all into two minutes. He ended up playing all of the folk songs he had written, and he played the title track from 'You Smell of Loneliness' too. That got the biggest laugh of all. They even sang along to his song about the blind Doberman.


Audrey was proud of him, but when he was in the car with her on the following day he said, "I don't feel a need to perform any more. You were right -- that whole Pearl Jam thing was left unresolved. But it's been well and truly resolved now. I can completely draw a line under that."


"I'm really happy for you," she said.


A song came on the radio, and Ronan said, "That song would make Nelson Mandela puke."


Audrey parked the car at the side of the road, turned off the engine and said, "Apologise."


"No."


"We're not moving until you apologise."


"Good." He was glad that things were back to normal.


The moose's head over the fireplace once had to pretend to enjoy a song that was written about him. One of our neighbours wrote it and she performed it for him. There was an anti-hunting sentiment to the song, but it was a bit late for that. She also got a dig in at me for saying that her curtains looked as if they'd been buried in a bog for thousands of years. It was meant to be a compliment.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Caterpillars


I've been watching a TV show about digging holes in gardens. It's presented by a man called Toggy Glocken. He dug a very interesting hole with a hammer. I tried it myself, but it didn't look right.


My cousin Alan was looking after his niece and nephew, Daisy and Graham, on one summer day. Graham was counting caterpillars. There were four of them. It didn't take long to count four caterpillars, so he counted them about ten times.


He turned away from them for a while and when he looked back, one of them was missing. "How come there's only three?" he said. "I'm fairly sure there were four the last time I counted."


"They have loads of legs," Daisy said. "What do you think happened?"


"Are you saying he just walked away?"


"Of course he just walked away. If you had that many legs, all you'd ever do is walk away."


Graham imagined having as many legs as a caterpillar, but he just saw himself kicking things.


They went looking for the caterpillar. Graham said, "Do you think caterpillars ever kick really small things? They must be tempted, if they came across something really small."


"They don't kick," Daisy said. "They just walk."


They found Alan, who had a fly swatter in his hand. He was standing still, waiting to pounce.


Graham said, "Have you ever accidentally hit a caterpillar, instead of a fly?"


"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of," he said.


They asked him to help them look for the caterpillar. It was really just to keep an eye on him, to stop him hitting caterpillars. Graham identified things for him, so he wouldn't hit anything he shouldn't. "That's a spider. That's a bike. That's a bird. That's a flower. That's a bottle. That's an opera singer. That's another bird. That's a tree. You could put the tree before the bird if you wanted to, but I put the bird first. That's a stone..."


Daisy eventually stopped and said, "Did we just pass an opera singer?"


"Let me see," Graham said. "There was the stone, the bird, the tree, or the tree and the bird. Hang on, I'm working backwards now. So it should be the tree and the bird. Because I said the bird and then the tree first. Or was it the other way around?"


"You said the bird and the tree. And before that you said there was an opera singer."


"The tree, the bird, and the opera singer. I did."


They went back, and yes, they had passed an opera singer. She sang a song about how the man she loved had cheated on her with a woman he met in a wardrobe. "It's a true story," she said when she finished the song.


"I'd hit him if he was here," Alan said, and he held up the fly swatter.


Graham said, "If you had loads of legs you could kick him as many times as you wanted. If he kicked you once, you could kick him twenty or thirty times, if you had twenty or thirty legs. Hitting someone with a fly swatter is fairly pathetic compared to that."


Alan picked up a stick and said, "Let's see if he thinks this is fairly pathetic."


They walked on and continued their search for the caterpillar. Graham said to the singer, "Do you believe in Martians?"


"I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Why?"


"I saw this thing on TV the other day where they had these Martians. They were all green and they had loads of eyes, but if you think about it, caterpillars are all green and have loads of legs, so..." Graham shrugged his shoulders.


The singer stopped moving. She looked frightened. Alan held up the stick, just to re-assure her.


Graham focussed on pointing out all the bigger things, to make sure Alan wouldn't mistake them for a Martian. "That's a car. That's a house. That's a tree. I'm not going to bother with the birds now. For one thing, it'll only confuse things, and for another thing... Well, there isn't another thing. But let's not confuse things. There is one thing, and I can't remember what that is now, but I remember I was pointing out the big things. That's a car. That's a house. That's a Martian. That's a cow..."


Daisy eventually stopped and said, "Did we just pass a Martian?"


"Let me see," Graham said. "There was a house. There was a car. Am I going forwards or backwards now? There was a rabbit somewhere in there too. Or am I thinking of something else? Because I was pointing out the big things, so... Unless it was a really big rabbit. But there was a house..."


To cut a long story short, later that afternoon they ended up listening to a couple arguing. This was after they crept through a corridor in an abandoned mansion and found a brass band who were covered in dust. They wondered if the band were really ghosts. Alan held the stick up just in case they were Martians.


The argument started because the man had said something about her hat. It's never a good idea to comment on a hat within earshot of the person beneath the hat, although with some hats you'd wonder if their owners could hear anything above all the radio signals they must be picking up. It's comments like those that start arguments. And you'll never win because the voices in their heads will provide plenty of ammunition. If you comment on the voices, you're finished. I commented on a hat once. It was meant to be a compliment. I asked a woman if her dog liked the hat she was wearing. Maybe the hat impaired her hearing, because she heard it as 'Has your dog ever been sexually attracted to your hat?'. Actually, there was nothing wrong with her hearing. But there had been an unfortunate incident involving the dog and the hat. It was more unfortunate for the hat than for the dog.


So the male half of the couple made a comment on her hat (he said she had an interesting hat and she thought he wanted to add 'it's a shame about the head') and the female half retaliated with a comment about his ears. Under no circumstances should you make a comment about ears when those ears are there to hear it. It doesn't matter how positive the comment is -- it'll get you in trouble.


He saw the Viking helmet on the opera singer's head, and he said to the female half, "That Viking helmet is more appealing than your hat."


She said, "The horns on the helmet would be more appealing as ears than the things on the sides of your head."


"You must have ears of steel to hold that hat up."


Alan and the opera singer got bored of the argument and they started talking. The couple eventually got bored of the argment too and they listened to Alan and the singer's conversation. They heard her say, "My uncle was always finding pliers. My aunt used to call him Mr. Pliers-Finder. 'Have you washed your hands there, Mr. Pliers-Finder?' He thought there was more to it than just a coincidence. He started reading things into it. It was almost a religion by the end. I'd say he found two or three of them. Probably just two. In fairness, pliers aren't the sort of thing you come across every day. If you found two newspapers you wouldn't think anything of it, but you find two pliers and the next thing you know, you're God."


Alan said, "I have an uncle who says 'Scooby Doo' a lot. He can make it mean lots of different things depending on the way he says it. It can mean 'F off' or 'That's one hell of a cake.'"


"We have so much in common."


"Yeah. We should go out some time."


He dropped the stick, she threw her helmet off and they started kissing passionately.


The couple thought they should distract Daisy and Graham from this. The woman said, "Look over there," and pointed in the opposite direction from Alan and the singer.


Graham saw the caterpillar. "There you are," he said. He went over to the caterpillar and picked it up. "You're number four."


The couple made sure the kids were looking away when they heard Alan say, "Scooby Doo!"


The moose's head over the fireplace seems to miss the Christmas decorations, especially the ones on his head. We had a Santa hat up there, and some tinsel on the antlers. We tried putting a scarf around his neck to compensate. The wife's aunt knitted it for him, and it has little reindeer on it. But he hates reindeer as much as the dog hates my green trousers.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Black Dog


I like this time of year. The days are getting longer. In the evening you'd notice the pale blue sky through the trees where before it was just black. It's as heart-warming as any Christmas lights.


My cousin Gary once went to a philosophy lecture with two of his friends, Andy and Robert. The lecturer was supposedly a well-known philosopher, although they'd never heard of him before. They followed what he was saying for the first ten minutes, but they were lost after he finished complaining about the airline he had travelled with.


The audience could ask questions at the end of the lecture, and Andy dared Gary to ask the question 'Who am I?'.


Gary continued his proud record of never turning down a dare. He asked the question, and the philosopher said, "I don't know. Who are you?"


Gary wasn't expecting that. He spoke about himself for a few minutes, and everyone was fascinated by the black dog that kept following him around. The philosopher said, "Is this a metaphor?"


"On certain levels," Gary said. He didn't know the meaning of the question or of his answer. His sister, Chloe, once told him to say 'on certain levels' if he didn't understand something.


This is how he earned his reputation as a poet and a thinker. 'Philosopher' sounded too base. He was a thinker. He was amazed at how easy it was to use his reputation to seduce intellectual women. That sounds terribly base, but it's true. People often used to go to him when they needed a good chat-up line, like 'Aren't you the woman who inspired Kate Moss to get plastic surgery?', but he had to go to his sister for lines to keep the intellectuals happy. She taught him phrases like 'from a dramaturgical point of view' and 'conflicting modalities'. He started wearing after-shave because he was worried that the black dog would follow him again and ruin everything (he thought that the dog must have been attracted to his smell).


He was amazed at how good-looking some of the intellectual women were. He started going out with one of them. Her name was Anita, and she was more beautiful than any of the women who fell for chat-up lines that referred to his trousers. She introduced him to a new set of friends. He pretended not to know Andy and Robert when he was with his new friends. They were about as welcome as the black dog.


Chloe kept providing him with new phrases and ideas, and these were enough to convince Anita that he was a genius. She asked him to give a talk to a poetry society. He kept refusing until she made it sound like a dare, and he couldn't say no to that. The talk itself wouldn't be a problem. Chloe wrote a script for him, and he was able to memorise that. It was the question-and-answer session at the end that he was afraid of. If some idiot stood up and said 'who am I?' then he'd know exactly what to do, but he couldn't rely on that happening.


He came up with a way for Chloe to listen to the questions and provide all of the answers. The talk was taking place in a room in the college. He had a microphone attached to his coat, and Chloe was able to hear what was said through this. She was in a room nearby. Gary was wearing an ear piece so she could talk to him.


It would have gone perfectly but for Andy and Robert. They were angry with Gary for ignoring them, and they wanted revenge. They told Chloe that Gary showed everyone a video of the time a hen chased her and she wanted revenge as well.


The three of them listened to Gary give his talk. He repeated himself a lot and he improvised with some of the phrases Chloe taught him. He got a round of applause when he finished, and then the questions started. The first one was 'could you recite one of your poems?'. Chloe, Andy and Robert all smiled. The three of them came up with lines for the poem. Andy and Robert wrote theirs down, and Chloe read them out for Gary. The following is a short section of the poem.


Where are thou, little fishy fishy fish?

How I wish you had some drugs.

My head is stuck in a hole again.

There are witches in my eyes

And they light up the hole,

But all I can see is a hole.

Am I a mole?

Mr. Mouse says I'm Martina Navratilova.

Is there a funny smell in here?


The poem got a huge round of applause, probably because of the added effect provided by the black dog, who sat at the side of the stage and looked at Gary. There was a line about a black dog driving a car in the poem.


Gary didn't move for a while. He was worried that the dog would ruin the effect by sniffing his crotch. He said, "I think I've said all there is to say," and he left the room to a standing ovation.


He really believed he was a poet after this, or that he could be a poet if he just came up with any old rubbish. But he lost his reputation with his next poem: 'I Shot a Panda'. His intellectual friends pretended not to know him, and he realised who his real friends were. He got back in their good books when they dared him to eat some milk they found and he did it.


The moose's head over the fireplace has been looking at a bucket for the past few days. The bucket was a present from the wife's uncle, and in fairness, it is a nice bucket. It has a blue metallic finish, with the word 'Bucket' in white letters. It's too good a bucket to use as a bucket. He often gives strange presents. A few years ago he gave us a lamp with a shade that looked like a balaclava. Looking at the bucket is much more relaxing than looking at the balaclava when the light is on.