The Aliens

The daffodils have emerged from their hibernation. The grass is growing quickly. I've never seen any great need to keep it short. My great-grandfather once planned to build a lawn tennis court in the garden, but the need to keep the grass short put him off. You wouldn't think he'd have to build anything. The lawn was already there, and he just needed to add the lines and the net. But he was going to build unnecessary red brick walls on the court. I think the purpose of the walls was to show how much he hated tennis.

My cousin Gary was looking out the window one evening. A bus passed by, but his mind was elsewhere, so he didn't notice the traffic. A strange sound brought his mind back from wherever it was to where he kept his brain. It was a sudden return to the real world, and the shock of it triggered a reaction that was just as strange as the sound. He raised one foot in the air and put his hand out in front of him, with all of his fingers extended. The look on his face suggested a combination of surprise, fear and regret at having sat on something that wasn't as dry as it looked.

His sister, Chloe, was just passing by the open door when she heard the sound. She was on her way to the porch to take a photo of a plant in a pot, just because she wanted to show the photo to some of her friends. She recovered from the shock of the noise in time to photograph her brother's reaction. She showed that photo to some of her friends, but it was such a great photo that it seemed wasted on the type of people who'd be interested in seeing a photo of a plant, so she sent it to a newspaper to see if they'd publish it.

The editor's name was Myles. He always wanted to be the editor of a newspaper because he was attracted to the life-style of smoking, drinking and stress-related illness. He married a model, also for life-style reasons, but she made him give up cigarettes, cut down on alcohol and take relaxing breaks to a house in the country. He was worried that his good health would damage his reputation, so he let people think he had a gambling problem.

He liked the photo of Gary because it looked so odd, and the reaction seemed to be spontaneous. But he couldn't put it in the paper just because it was odd. He might get away with that if he had a drink problem, but thanks to his wife he had been prevented from using many libelous stories and photos and then blaming it on the drink.

But then he remembered a story they were doing on the government's proposed funding for new schools. He decided to use the photo of Gary with this story. The photo appeared over the caption 'A voter reacts to the minister's announcement'.

Most people who saw it found it amusing. Gary's reaction would have been a perfect way to illustrate the government's crime policy, but no one was there to capture it on camera. His friends thought it was hilarious. Chloe found it funny too, but she decided to avoid her brother for as long as possible.

As it turned out, this wasn't very long. He found her and he was just about to complain when he heard what sounded like a dog howling. He looked up at the ceiling as he listened to the sound. His mouth was hanging open, and Chloe couldn't resist taking another photo of him. When the sound stopped he began his complaint about the photo. Chloe nodded at everything he said and apologised unreservedly. He accepted her apology and left, and then she sent the most recent photo of him to the editor.

Myles used this photo to illustrate the government's attitude to global warming. The government didn't find these photos funny at all. A minister said that Myles was out of control, and he loved hearing that. It felt like drinking a double whiskey in one go.

Gary became a minor celebrity because of his appearances in the paper. He was interviewed on a radio show, and he said that in the first photo he was just reacting to a very strange noise he heard. Other people phoned the radio station and said that they heard a strage noise at about the same time in the same area. And then someone phoned in and said they could identify the source of the sound.

A group of students in a local secondary school had planned to enter a science competition with a machine that tells you when your plants need to be watered. Early on in their work they discovered that their machine made a strange noise, so they forgot about the plants and concentrated on the noise. By the time they finished the machine they were able to classify the sound as 'a very strange noise'. When they were showing it to the judges at the science competition they pressed the button to make the noise. Everyone else thought it was a very impressive noise, but the judges didn't think much of it. The students left the competition without a prize. When they were going home on the bus they hooked up their invention with a machine that identifies the colour of paint, which came third in the competition. The result was the very, very strange noise that Gary heard.

The newspaper was selling tens of thousands more copies because of the publicity over Gary's reactions. Myles asked Chloe for more photos. She said she'd need assistants if she wanted to induce strange reactions in her brother again. He told her she could hire anyone and take as much from the expense account as she wanted. She hired the students who created the noise. She got them to work on different noises to surprise her brother. This method worked twice, once when Gary was in the garden and the noise made him climb a tree, and another time when the noise made him put his hand in his mouth.

But the third noise didn't work at all. Chloe was standing nearby with her camera. Gary turned to her and said, "Ha! I'll never fall for that again."

He gave her a single-finger salute, which she photographed. The photo was used to illustrate the government's defence of the health service. Myles expected the government to be furious, but they had changed their opinion of Gary's reactions. He was getting a lot of media attention, and they thought they could use it to their advantage. They told Gary they'd like to photograph him in a hot tub with a former Miss World. They wanted to use this to illustrate their tax policy.

Myles had no interest in using the photos if the government supported them. That's why Chloe decided to make Gary react while he was with the former Miss World. She knew that Myles would use a photo of that because of the presence of the former beauty queen and because it would ruin the government's photo shoot.

Gary had stopped reacting to the noises on their own, so she needed to think on a bigger scale, and there was no limit to the scale because of her access to the expense account. She thought that Gary would be un-nerved if he saw a game of human chess. He'd let his guard down, and that would be the time to pounce with the latest noise. It would have to be the most disturbing noise of all.

Chloe hired actors to play the chess pieces, and because of the limitless funds, she hired another set of actors to play another set of chess pieces. The second set would arrive at the chess board (on a lawn outside the hotel where Gary was meeting the former Miss World) and they'd see the first set, who'd be ordered off the board. This would un-nerve the second set. Gary would be even more un-nerved by a set of human chess pieces who looked nervous as they stood completely still on the board.

When Gary met the former Miss World he told her he always got to know women before getting into a hot tub with them. They drank champagne.

The second set of chess pieces arrived outside. Some of them asked what was going on when they saw the first set on the board, but no one answered their questions. They were told that they'd hear a noise as Gary looked at them, and they should remain completely still all the time.

The students had come up a noise which they classified as 'very disturbing'. In tests it had made mice cover their ears with their paws. As the students waited for Gary to appear on the scene, they switched on their machine. A red light was supposed to come on, but it didn't. One of them tried pressing the button to make the noise, but no sound came from the machine. He pressed the button again, and again and again until the button jammed. The power cable was attached to an extension lead, and one of the students followed the lead back to its source, where he found the cause of their lack of power: it wasn't plugged in. So he plugged it in.

The machine emitted its disturbing sound, and it kept making the noise. It terrified the two sets of chess pieces, and their reaction was to fight each other. The chess board became a battle field, and the continuous noise only made the fighting more intense. The participants didn't know if they were supposed to be fighting pieces of the opposite colour or the pieces from the other set, so they just fought anyone.

Gary had been getting on very well with the former Miss World. Even the noise outside didn't divert their attention from each other. The champagne certainly helped. She didn't speak much English, but Gary was able to translate the expression on her face as 'kiss me'. He double checked his mental dictionary to make sure. If it wasn't for this pause he might have got to kiss her, but just after he closed the dictionary eight screaming bishops ran by. Her expression changed. Gary checked in the dictionary again, and the best translation he could come up with was 'Eight bishops. Wow'. She went outside to see what was going on, and Gary went with her.

One of the students eventually remembered why the machine had refused to make its sound earlier. He unplugged the extension lead and the noise ceased. The battle halted immediately. No one moved -- this was their reaction to the eerie silence. The scene had all the desolation of a battle field after a battle. The former Miss World walked slowly across the chess board. Chloe took a photo of her, and it appeared on the front page of the paper on the following day. Most people translated her expression as 'Your country's weird. I'm going home'.

Chloe gave up photographing her brother's reactions. She remembered her roots, and she photographed the plant in the porch instead.

The moose's head over the fireplace is good at predicting the weather, or so the wife's uncle claims, but he says the same thing about swallows, snails, dolphins, dead butterflies and a wire clothes hanger he found. He looks into the moose's eyes and says 'It's going to rain' or 'It'll be fine tomorrow'. Actually he's never said 'It'll be fine tomorrow'. In fairness, he's been very accurate so far.

Match-Making

The garden is showing signs of life again. I cut the grass recently. It seems a shame to be cutting things as soon as they start growing. Some people would say there's a lesson on life in that. But the grass keeps growing despite being cut, and I have to keep cutting it. There's a more depressing lesson on life in that.

My cousin Charlotte was always looking for a chance to practise her match-making skills, and a friend of hers, Denise, provided the perfect opportunity. Denise had seventeen rabbits. She put an ad in the lonely hearts section of the newspaper once, and everyone knew it was her because the man she was looking for 'must like French films and seventeen rabbits'.

The ad didn't work. Charlotte knew a man who was looking for someone too, and she decided to bring them together, but she knew they'd be too nervous if she told them the outcome she had in mind (she wouldn't have actually told Denise anyway -- she'd have just let the rabbits demonstrate it). So she decided to put them in a room and let nature take its course.

After a lot of careful manouvering and prodding, she got them alone together, but all nature did was to make them argue about New Zealand. The next time Denise met Charlotte she kept complaining about him. Martin complained about her too. Charlotte thought there was hope for them yet because at least they felt something for each other, even though they both would have been happy seeing the other one being bitten by a wild animal who might have an infectious disease that can be passed on to humans, but after tests and weeks of worry it's found that the animal doesn't have this disease.

The next time they met, they argued again, and their dislike of each other grew to the point at which they hoped the animal would have the disease.

Charlotte thought she could still save the situation if she could just find something they have in common. There was no obvious connection. He didn't like French films and he was indifferent towards rabbits. She interviewed both of them individually. Neither realised they were being interviewed. They assumed she was genuinely interested in how much jam they use every week, or what their favourite tree was. But she couldn't find anything between the two of them.

Charlotte decided to get the help of a woman called Maria who was always falling in love. Almost every time Charlotte saw her she one of the two players in a passionate embrace/gaze with a man who previously had passionate affairs with women in Swiss mountain villas. She had an extraordinary ability to find that sort of man in a town full of the sort of men who argued and fought over how many rats they'd shot.

The last time they met, Charlotte said something about the weather and Maria said, "He was an artist. We fell in love. He painted me on the hills and he said I was his wild flower. And now he's gone."

Every 'we fell in love' was inevitably followed by an 'and now he's gone', which was once followed by a 'to Russia to recover his fortune'. An ability to fall in love so frequently must be must be accompanied by a disposition for emotional goodbyes in the middle of the night, standing in the rain. But her expertise in love was the important thing. Martin would never leave Denise because his half-brother was thrown off a train by a European aristocrat.

So Charlotte went to see Maria and told her about Denise and Martin. Maria went to see Martin and said, "Come with me."

She led him away by the hand, and he let her because he didn't know how to object to a woman like Maria.

She took him to Denise. She let go of Martin's hand and she whispered something to Denise, who smiled at Martin.

Maria said to him, "You must take her to dinner. You must descend with her into the sad beauty of life or rise above to see the streetlights below, sparkling points of light in a distant night time land. You must cry."

He tried to look as if he knew what he was doing. "You must come to dinner with me," he said, and he tried to sound like the sort of man who'd challenge European aristocrats to duels. He didn't quite reach that level, but it was good enough to make Denise weak in the knees. That sort of man didn't normally talk to women who had seventeen rabbits.

They walked away. Charlotte asked Maria what she had whispered. She said, "I told her he once shot a man who laughed when a woman dropped her glove."

"I'd never have thought of something like that."

"Could you do a favour for me?"

"Just name it."

"I need you to visit a man. Every time I see him it ends in tears. I want you to tell him I'm dying inside, and when I'm dead inside I'll be able to see him and say, 'Ah, Alexander, we were young once. Once we were young and foolish and we lived where the golden evening sun starts fires in the edges of the white clouds after a day of rain. They didn't understand. They didn't know. No one knew. And in the end they were right.'"

"I should probably write this down."

Maria also gave her a small box to give to Alexander. On the way to his house, Charlotte opened the box, and there was an engagement ring inside.

He lived in an old house just outside the town. He was knocking down an interior wall with a hammer when Charlotte got there. She gave him the ring and passed on the general gist of the message. He put the ring on a writing desk. From a drawer in the desk he took a Polaroid camera, and from another drawer he took a revolver. He pointed the camera at his face and the revolver at the side of his head. Charlotte froze in shock. She didn't know if he was going to take a photo or pull the trigger. She nearly fainted when she heard a click, but it was just the camera. He put the gun on the desk, and he gave the photo to Charlotte. "Give this to her," he said.

When Maria saw the photo she said, "Poor, stupid Alexander."

"He seemed nice," Charlotte said. "Isn't there any way you could marry him?"

"My heart says yes but my head says no. I've been through this often enough to know my head is always right."

Charlotte wanted to bring them together, but she didn't know how to do it. She didn't think there was anything she could whisper about shooting people that would make Maria see him in a different light.

She said, "What exactly is your head's objection to Alexander?"

"We're just too different. We'd only be the same in the way we drift apart."

"The photo suggests he has no intention of drifting away from you."

"Feelings seize him. They take control and make him reckless, and then they fade and let him drift away."

"You have so much more in common with him than you have with someone like Martin."

"Men like Martin are too good for women like me. Their intangible beauty will always remain a mystery."

"Too good? So your head would approve of someone like Martin?"

"My head and heart would be anchored to his immediate vicinity for evermore."

A plan was forming in Charlotte's head. That night she sat in her car on the street where Denise lived. She saw Denise and Martin return from their date. They kissed briefly, and then Denise went inside. Martin walked away with a smile on his face. As he passed Charlotte's car, she leant across and opened the door on the passenger's side. "Get in the car," she said.

She was the third woman to issue with a command in the space of a few hours. He was glad he had obeyed 'come with me' and 'kiss me', so he was happy to obey Charlotte.

She took him to Maria's house. She rang the doorbell and she said to Martin, "Just tell her a bit about yourself."

When Maria opened the door, Charlotte pushed him in and said, "He's all yours."

When he said the word 'The' he was the perfect mix of mystery and intangible beauty in Maria's mind, but by the time he finished the sentence with the words 'so that's why I shouldn't put things up my nose' he was something else entirely, something her head strongly disapproved of. Her brain's policy u-turn with regard to men like Martin was reflected in the reversal of her attitude to men like Alexander. She went straight to Alexander's house. He dropped the hammer and they embraced. They cried.

Charlotte was delighted. She hadn't directly brought about the union of Denise and Martin, but she could take full responsibility for Maria and Alexander's engagement, and that felt like catching a shark when she'd only been fishing for mackeral.

The moose's head over the fireplace likes traditional music, so we often play some for him in the evenings. I don't know where he stands on Irish dancing. His lack of legs would hinder any sort of a stance, especially one regarding dancing. The wife's uncle says he knew a one-legged man who was a great Irish dancer. He used to hit his head with his wooden leg while he danced.

The Shadow

People ride horses through the fields behind the garden. It's a great way of looking down on things without having to wait until your legs grow abnormally long. And you just have to sit there and hold the reins. It's like a piggy back ride on a pig who's been through butler school and whose legs have had that abnormal growth spurt. You'd have every right to look down on people if your butler carries you around the place. Your butler could look down on people too. I know people who'd feel inferior to a horse, and rightly so. They'd see the horse looking distinguished as it trots along, its head held high, whereas they tend to stoop and look down, the view of the stains on their trousers constantly reminding them how much better the horse is. At least they get to look down on their pigs, but the pigs couldn't care less.

My uncle Cyril was in his local pub one evening. As closing time approached there were only four people there, including the bar man. His name was Billy. The other two customers were Felix and Paddy. Even at its busiest, there was rarely more than ten people in the pub.

Just after midnight, Billy saw something small and black and it was moving quickly across the pub. It seemed to be a shadow of something, but that something was notable by its absence, like Cliff Richard and The Shadows without Cliff Richard. Billy wondered if he should shoot it. He would have done if it was more than just a shadow, i.e. if Cliff Richard was there. If you shoot a shadow you're just shooting the wall or the ground, which is something Billy liked to do when he got bored.

Cyril said, "I know a man who could help."

"What sort of a man?" Billy said.

"Well I've never personally checked, but I've always assumed he's a fully-paid member of the male population. He's not one of those fella's from Thailand, like Joe's wife."

"No, I mean what does he do?"

"For anything remotely supernatural, this is the fella to call. He's the man who got the thing of Mark's head and put it on Dan's."

"You think this is supernatural?"

"What else would it be? It could be the fairies."

"Oh God no. Those little feckers could ruin you."

"Shh. They'll definitely ruin you if you talk like that. I'll call Phil tomorrow and get him to come around."

When Phil arrived in the pub he wore a dark brown suit and a black bowler hat. He had a briefcase. He opened it on the bar and took out a notebook and a pen. He asked Billy a series of questions (such as 'Has there been a history of mental illness in your family?') and he wrote the answers in the notebook. But Billy interrupted him when he pointed and said, "Look, there's the shadow."

Phil fumbled in his pocket, took out a handgun and fired a few shots in the general direction of the shadow.

"I could have done that myself," Billy said.

"I should call my grandfather," Phil said. "He taught me everything I know."

When the grandfather arrived he said they'd have to wait until the shadow appeared again, even if they had to wait all night. Cyril and the other regulars liked the sound of that. They offered their assistance.

At two o' clock there was still no sign of the shadow. Felix said he knew an Elvis impersonator who cast a shadow of Dean Martin. "Some people believed he really was Elvis."

"Wouldn't it be more likely that he really was Dean Martin?" Cyril said.

"No, Dean Martin was still alive then."

"Wouldn't it be less likely to be Dean Martin after he's dead?"

"When Elvis died it became more likely that millions of people who work in supermarkets and take-aways are Elvis."

It made sense at the time. Shortly after that, the shadow appeared. It made its way across the pub, looking very casual, and it disappeared into the shadow cast by a table. Phil's grandfather was much calmer than Phil. He didn't reach for a gun at all. He just looked on in silence.

"Will we call it 'Les'?" Felix said.

"No," Billy said.

"I've always wanted to call something 'Les'. 'Hello Les. How are y', Les? Is that you, Les?'"

"And you'd say that to something you called Les?"

"Or someone called Les. You could call a dog Les."

"You'd call your dog 'Les'?"

"No, I suppose not. I'd call someone else's dog 'Les', if they asked me for suggestions. And then I could say, 'Hello Les. How are y', Les? Is that you, Les?'"

"We'll call the shadow 'Les' if it means that much to you."

Phil's grandfather said, "The only time I've seen anything like that before was at Hilary's house. I'll go to see her in the morning."

So he went to see her in the morning, and she came into the pub in the afternoon. The shadow went straight to her feet, like a dog going to its owner. She seemed pleased to see it too.

Felix said, "It wouldn't respond to the name 'Les' would it?"

"No," she said. "It doesn't really have a name. Although I used to call it 'Veronica', just to annoy it."

"And did that work?"

"No."

"Where did you get the shadow?" Billy said.

"It came with the house. My first reaction was to get petrol and matches to burn the place down, but then I thought no, that'll do no good. My next reaction was to scream, but that didn't do any good either, although it did seem to disorientate the shadow for a while. I've been told I have a very distinctive scream. A friend of mine said that his shadow fell off him when I screamed once. But I couldn't be screaming every time I saw the shadow just for the sake of disorientating it for a while. For one thing, he'd probably get used to it long before the neighbours would. I didn't know what to do, but when the shadow went a week without killing me, I started to relax. I thought there was a chance we could live together after all. I still left out traps and things but I didn't really expect them to work. I had a mouse trap with cheese in it. I knew that wouldn't work, but I'd have been kicking myself if after years of trying to catch the thing, someone came along and caught it with a mouse trap."

"Is there any chance you'd take it back?" Billy said.

"Oh yeah, I'd love to have it back. I've missed it since it left. Every little noise frightens me now. This little fella was great for keeping away mice and rats. Can you imagine if a mouse or a rat saw that flying by? They'd lay off the drink then."

"I think it's only making my rats drink more."

"And it's great for getting rid of people I want to get rid of. I'd say to them, 'There's something you have to see. You'll laugh at this.' They have a very distinctive laugh. It always sounds like a scream."

Felix said he'd like to hear her scream, so she gave it a go.

"To be honest," Felix said, "that was a bit of an anti-climax.

"I can't just switch it on. I need something to scare me, to make me do it with feeling."

"What would you say if I asked you out for a drink? And bear in mind that you can't scare me away with your shadow or your scream."

"I'd say yes. And bear in mind that I could just kick your shins. I do that very distinctively too."

"I know just the pub we can go to."

"What about here?"

"This isn't the sort of pub you'd take a woman to, not even a woman who screams, kicks shins and has an unexplained shadow. Although it might be the place to take a woman who sets things on fire."

She left the pub with Felix, and the shadow followed her. She probably screamed with feeling when Felix told her about his foot.

The moose's head over the fireplace has made friends with a small monkey. I don't know where the monkey came from. He likes climbing on the moose's antlers, and the moose lets him. The monkey doesn't like the rest of us. I think he suspects us of trying to take his harmonica. I don't know where he got the harmonica.