The Hypnotist

I found a map of the garden that my great-grandfather made. He had drawn lines over the map to mark out a stone path he planned to build, but it never got beyond the planning stage. I followed the route shown on the map, and it's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. I suppose he must have realised that arranging stones isn't such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon and it would have taken many afternoons to complete it. My grandmother once said that the path was meant to be a comment on the pointlessness of life, but he found a better way to do that when he took up hunting.

My uncle Ben had a pen, which he used to write words, and sometimes he arranged those words into sentences, but mostly he left them alone. It seemed a shame to herd a perfectly harmless word into a sentence just for the sake of meaning and order. The word 'the' was fine on its own. He often thought of himself as a 'the'. He was definite about things. He could put his foot down, and he didn't like being herded into sentences by his wife, Greta. But she normally got her way, despite his objections. She made him go to visit a friend of hers in the country. He was perfectly happy at home with his pen, but she put her foot down and he had no choice.

Her friend in the country was called Mabel. Every time they visited her, she spoke at length about her college days in India. Ben often wondered if she meant to say 'day' instead of 'days'. He believed that she had once been 'in' a college in India, but he wasn't convinced that she was actually a student there. He normally switched off his brain when she started telling these stories. They went for a walk down a narrow lane on a hillside, leading down into a valley, and she told them about the dog that followed her around during her college 'days' in India.

Ben ignored her and he tried to enjoy his surroundings. He listened to the birds and the buzzing of flies or bees or wasps. He thought he heard a noise from somewhere. Whatever it was, it couldn't compete with Mabel's voice, but it got louder, and when Mabel finally heard it she stopped talking. Ben could hear the noise clearly then. It sounded like a man's voice, and he was using just one word. Ben liked that. With all the animals confined to fields, and being confined between the ditches himself, it was nice to hear a word set free on its own to wander through the country air, like the birds and all the things with wings.

Within the space of about two seconds he realised that the voice was coming from behind them, the word was 'help', and it was emanating from a man on a bike with no brakes, who went past them at speed. He disappeared around a corner and they ran after him.

They found the bike stuck in a ditch at the next corner. He had nearly made it to the bottom of the hill. The back wheel of the bike was still spinning, but there was no sign of its rider.

He was in a tree nearby. They saw him when he said, "Hello," and waved.

Mabel recognised him. "This is Roger," she said. "He's one of my neighbours."

"How did you get into the tree?" Ben said to him.

"I climbed it. I heard a crashing noise. It sounded a bit like a bike crashing into a ditch, so I came up here hoping to see where the crash was."

"Didn't you just crash into the ditch?"

"Me? I'm in a tree."

"Before you were in a tree. Before you climbed it, were you on this bike that's stuck in the ditch?"

"You might have a point there."

"That was the sound you heard."

"I think you're right. It's happened before. I've hit my head and been dazed, and someone would ask me what happened and I'd say, 'Someone hit his head.' And they'd say, 'Is he okay?' And I'd say, 'He must be -- he's gone away.'"

"Has he ever climbed a tree before?"

"Oh God no! I'm in a tree!"

"You are."

"How did I get into a tree?"

"You climbed it."

"But I hate trees. I keep falling out of them."

"Why do you keep climbing them if you always fall out of them?"

"I never climb trees."

"What about this one?"

"Oh God no! I'm in a tree!"

"Maybe you should just climb down before you fall down."

"I'll fall down if I climb down."

"Your options are fairly limited here."

"Yeah."

"You don't have much choice."

"I have virtually no choice when I fall down."

"You'll be stuck there if you don't try to climb down."

"Not necessarily. I have a feeling there's another way out of this."

They left him to ponder the problem.

As they walked away, Mabel thought of Keith, one of her neighbours. He was a hypnotist, and he could help Roger out of the tree by hypnotising him into thinking that he wasn't afraid of falling. Keith owned a small farm nearby. It had been in his family for generations. He had never married, despite a brilliant seduction technique that had worked on a dog. Before using it on a woman, he had tested it on a dog to make sure it wasn't too powerful, and the test was limited to making the dog walk into a wall. Some of his friends suggested that if a seduction technique designed for use on women could make dogs walk into walls, then that technique was too powerful. Others suggested that there was no such thing as too powerful when it came to seduction.

It didn't work on real women. Some of his friends suggested that it wasn't powerful enough. Others suggested that it wasn't a seduction technique at all -- it was just a way of hypnotising dogs. He often used his seduction technique in the pub when they got bored and they had access to two dogs. They'd take bets on which one would reach the wall first. It once worked as a seduction technique for the dogs, and it nearly worked for Keith when he met a woman in the pub who was interested in what he did. He'd never seen the film 'The Horse Whisperer', but he'd seen ads for it, and the image he'd formed of Robert Redford's character was the one he tried to fit into when he told her about his 'work'. This image was strongly influenced by 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. He'd never seen that either. But sadly, the image she perceived was strongly influenced by one of the dogs, who successfully seduced a bar stool. Keith said, "I didn't tell him to do that." But she suddenly remembered that she had to be somewhere else and she left.

They went to see Keith and they asked him if he'd hypnotise Roger. He said he'd have a go at it, and they took him to the tree. When they got there, Roger had climbed higher. He said, "I discovered another way, but it doesn't seem to be helping me out of the tree. If anything, it's hindering me."

Keith climbed the tree. Roger was sitting on a branch and clinging to the trunk. Keith sat on a branch at the other side of the trunk. He said, "Look into my eyes." Roger got ready to jump, but Keith said, "No, wait. This isn't a seduction technique. I'm just trying to help you out of the tree. Look into my eyes..."

It took a lot of convincing, but Roger finally looked into his eyes. Keith hypnotised him. He said, "When I click my fingers, you will no longer be afraid of falling."

Keith clicked his fingers, and within seconds, Roger had made his way to the ground. Unfortunately, without a fear of falling he put little effort into preventing his fall. The branches of the tree did their best to protect him, apart from the final branch, which turned him upside down and sent him head first into the ground, but he didn't have far to go, and the moss cushioned his fall. When he got to his feet he looked a bit unsteady for a while. He looked up into the tree and thanked Keith.

Keith was just about to make his way down when he suddenly moved further out on the branch.

"What's wrong?" Mabel said.

"There's a spider on the trunk."

"Are you afraid of spiders?"

"Yeah."

"I actually like spiders," she said, and she climbed the tree. She sat on the branch next to Keith. She picked up the spider. It moved around on her left hand, and then onto her right hand and up her arm, and then back to her left hand. Keith held his breath until the spider came to a halt. "I'll take it down with me," she said.

"That's the last time I climb a tree," he said.

"In many ways you're safer on a tree. Spiders aren't going to hurt you. Dogs can't climb trees and they can hurt you. Even the ones who are friendly. They can be too friendly. When I was in college in India I met a man from Switzerland. He went to India to study Switzerland. He thought that by being away from the country he'd have a clearer impression of it. He chose India because it was so different to Switzerland. Many dogs used to follow him around the place. Sometimes you'd see over ten of them behind him. It worried him. He thought there was a sort of a curse on him. One of the few things he learnt about Switzerland was that dogs don't follow him there, and that wasn't of much practical value. He eventually came to the conclusion that India was the wrong place to go to learn about his home country. There's so much to learn about India in India that it seems a waste to learn about Switzerland there."

"I was in Switzerland once," Keith said. "I didn't realise I was there until after I'd left, and I wasn't there then. So I can't say I learnt anything about Switzerland when I was there, and the only thing I learnt about Switzerland when I was in Germany was that I wasn't in Switzerland. I could have learnt that anywhere. I could climb a tree to learn that, as long as the tree wasn't in Switzerland. And you could just as easily say that that's something I learnt about Germany."

"That you were in Germany?"

"Yeah."

"If it's something you learnt about Switzerland, then it's something you learnt about India too."

"That I wasn't in India?"

"Exactly."

"I never thought of that."

"There are lots of things you could learn about the ground while you're stuck in a tree. This could make you appreciate the ground much more."

"I can see the drawbacks to being on the ground too. You don't get as good a view. Well, that's one drawback anyway. You don't get trapped by spiders on the ground."

"There's no need to be afraid of spiders. If you were in Australia you should be afraid of spiders. I don't know about India -- I wasn't there for long enough. I don't know about Switzerland either."

"Neither do I. That's one of the things I didn't learn when I was there."

"But surely you've learnt enough about Ireland to know that you shouldn't fear spiders. Some of them can be friendly."

"I've learnt enough about my cousin Seamus to know that I shouldn't give him a loan of a shovel every time he sees a hedgehog, but I do."

Ben was getting bored of this. Not only did he have to listen to Mabel, but he also had a pain in his neck from looking up into the tree. He said to Keith, "Have you ever tried hypnotising yourself into liking spiders?"

"I heard of a hypnotist who tried to hypnotise himself by video taping his hypnosis routine and then watching it on TV. He was hoping to erase an unpleasant memory. I think it had something to do with public nudity. I don't know if it was himself or someone else. It could be more unpleasant if it was someone else, depending on who that other person was. There are some images you wouldn't want in your head if you wanted to hold onto the hat of your sanity. But anyway, he wanted to get rid of something from his head, so he filmed himself and watched it on TV, but all he achieved was to convince himself that he had his own TV show. He thought he was a star. Everywhere he went, he was convinced that people recognised him."

"Did he erase what he wanted to erase?" Mabel said.

"No. Because he was paranoid about the press finding out about that. It must have been himself who had lost his clothes, because the press wouldn't be interested in the story if he'd just seen someone else. Unless it was a case of private nudity, and he was somewhere he shouldn't have been. I know people who've been in those places. Although, they'd have no intention of erasing those scenes. The only reason they were in those places was to record them."

"Didn't anyone try to hypnotise him out of his belief that he was a star?"

"Not at all. That was the best thing that ever happened to him. A lot of people believed that he really was a TV star. He found that fame was the greatest aphrodisiac of all. He has countless mental scenes of beautiful women that would more than make up for any unpleasant scenes he's stuck with."

"And all that came about just because he hypnotised himself from his own TV?"

"Yeah. I tried it myself, but it didn't work."

"What if you taught me how to hypnotise people," Mabel said, "and then I hypnotised you not to fear spiders."

"It's worth trying, I suppose. Just follow these simple instructions. Firstly, look into my eyes..."

She didn't notice that by demonstrating his hypnosis technique he was actually hypnotising her. But she was prevented from slipping into a trance, and also reminded of another technique, when she noticed a dog walking into the ditch below. She said, "You're just trying to seduce me!"

"I'm not," he said. "There's no way I'd ever try to seduce you..."

He didn't get to the end of that sentence. The end was meant to be 'in a tree'. He'd never try to seduce anyone in a tree because so many attempts on the ground had ended in failure, and that failure would be deeply uncomfortable if they were alone together in a tree. And it'd be ten times worse with an audience on the ground below. But when she heard 'I'd never try to seduce you' she immediately assumed that he believed she wasn't good enough for him, that he saw her as someone he'd have to erase from his mind if he saw too much of her, and would rather not see her at all. So she slapped him across the face before he finished his sentence. He lost his balance and he fell.

It was a similar fall to Roger's, but Keith didn't get up straightaway. Mabel put the spider down and descended to the ground. "I'm sorry," she said to Keith. "I didn't mean for you to fall."

"I meant 'in a tree'," he said. "I was going to say 'in a tree'."

"I'm really sorry."

She took him to her house and she poured him a glass of whiskey. Ben had a glass too, and Greta had a cup of tea. She gave them all a slice of cake. Keith edited most of these details when he told the story later. He focussed on the fact that she took him back to her place and gave him whiskey. He left out the bit about her slapping him across the face too. He tried to use the story to prove that his seduction technique had worked, in a roundabout sort of way, or with lots of roundabouts and by-roads and dead-ends.

Ben didn't leave out any details when he told the story later. He was happy with the outcome. It was as if the words had organised themselves into a script, something that cows could never do.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the sound of the tennis on TV, as long as they don't start grunting too loudly. The look on his face suggests his mind his far away. My mind tends to head for the nearest exit when the tennis is on. It was on when the wife's uncle called around on Monday evening. After about ten seconds of watching it he started talking about what would happen if all of the little green and red men in traffic lights escaped. There's be millions of them, and they'd form two groups according to their colour. They'd never have seen each other before. The sight of these alien people would fill them with fear and suspicion, and war would be inevitable. Even if they didn't fear each other they'd still start fighting just to pass the time in a world without women. The green men would be more mobile in a war, but the red men would be more likely to stand their ground. And it would be difficult to take the green men seriously when they start flashing and then disappear, probably into the bushes from which they came, which may have something to do with their world without women. I don't know if any of that has anything to do with tennis.

The Violin

We've had a lot of rain recently, so it's starting to feel like summer at last. The long periods of dry weather were disconcerting. The lawns are full of buttercups and dandelions. My grandfather once let the grass grow for a whole summer without cutting it. He just wanted to see what the garden would look like if it was left to its own devices. He took photos of it. After a few months, the garden looked as if it had been abandoned. A cousin of his called Seamus came to visit while the garden was in its wild state. Seamus had never been outside the city, and he was suspicious of the tall, thin people who stood in a line, remaining motionless. They all wore the same green and brown uniform. My grandfather explained that they were something called 'trees', and they wouldn't bother him if he ignored them. The long grass made him nervous, and that's why my grandfather had to cut it.

My cousin Darren knows a talented violinist called Paul. Paul was hoping to buy a decent violin, and he was willing to pay more than what he paid for his car (it was a second-hand car and he got a discount because a dog had given birth on the back seat). He was in a music shop one day and the owner said he knew of a man who was trying to sell a Stradivarius for five thousand euros. He had left his address with the man in the shop.

Paul had doubts about the authenticity of the violin, but he thought it was worth investigating anyway. The address led him to a house in the middle of a row of old houses on a hill in the city. He knocked on the door and a man opened it. Paul introduced himself and said he was interested in the violin. The man introduced himself as Alex and they shook hands. He invited Paul in to look at it.

Paul waited in the living room while Alex went upstairs to get the violin. He returned with a black case. He put the case on the coffee table in front of Paul, and then he took a key from his pocket. He opened the lock in the case and lifted the lid.

Paul's mouth opened in an O shape to express awe at what he saw before him. The violin was beautiful. He carefully picked it up and spent a few minutes just admiring the visual beauty of it before he thought about the sound. "Can I play it?" he said.

"Of course."

Paul picked up the bow and played, and it sounded just as good as it looked. As soon as he stopped playing he said, "How much?"

"Five grand," Alex said. "In cash."

"I'll take it."

Paul went to the bank and withdrew five thousand euros in cash. He went back to the house, and the deal was completed as soon as Alex had finished counting the cash. Paul left with the violin. He lived in a house in the country. As soon as he got home he took the phone off the hook and started playing. He played for hours. He'd never been able to induce such a beautiful sound before. This was even more beautiful than the love-filled sigh he'd induced from Samantha when he said he loved white clouds because they reminded him of pet rabbits.

That love-filled sigh was like music to his ears at the time, but it came at a cost: he shuddered every time he thought about what he said. And the beauty of the violin didn't remain untainted for very long. As he was putting the instrument back into its case that evening he thought he heard something moving inside it. He gently shook the violin, and there was definitely something there. He stood under the light in the kitchen and he tried to see what it was, but he couldn't make it out.

Darren lived nearby. He called around to see the violin on the following day, and he couldn't identify the thing inside it either, but he knew someone who could help. A friend of his called Davey had a dentist's mirror. He says he found it (he found it in a dentist's surgery). Davey put the mirror into the violin, and with the light from a small flashlight he was able to identify the contents of the violin. "Are you sitting down?" he said to Paul.

"You can see very well that I'm not sitting down."

"Yeah. I suppose that's just a figure of speech."

"What is it?"

"You should be sitting down. It's a finger."

Paul thought he was joking at first, but Davey let him look through the mirror, and it was a finger alright. Paul's first thought was to sell the violin on Ebay, but when the shock faded he reacted with terror.

"How could you get a finger into a violin?" Darren said. "There isn't a hole big enough to get it in?"

"How am I going to get it out if there isn't a hole big enough to get it in?" Paul said.

Davey said, "I could drill a hole in it. You wouldn't even notice it."

"Of course I'd notice if it's big enough to get a finger out."

"I know people with holes in their heads that you can put your finger into and they don't notice."

"I don't want anything more to do with this," Paul said. "I'm taking it back to the man who sold it to me."

He went back to the house and rang the doorbell, but this time a woman opened the door. He asked if he could speak to Alex, and she said, "He left yesterday. He was renting this house from me. He said he had to leave because of a family emergency in Germany."

"Where did he go?"

"Well, Germany, I assume. Although I remember him telling me before that his family were from Galway. I probably would have been more inquisitive, but he paid the rent for the next month, so I just said I hoped everything worked out in Germany and I left it at that."

Paul returned home with the violin. He remembered returning home on the previous day. He had been so full of excitement then. All he had wanted to do was to play the violin, but that desire had completely drained away. He tried telling himself that it was irrational to stop playing the violin just because there was a finger in it. It wasn't as if anyone was attached to the finger. Someone would have been attached to it once, in more ways than one, but the finger is no good to them any more.

He played the violin again, and he tried to forget about the finger. The sound was so beautiful that he was able to temporarily erase the contents of the violin from his mind, but he was reminded of the finger every time he heard it moving around inside. It was a disheartening sound. Every day he played the violin, but he couldn't get used to it. Sometimes at night he'd hear a noise and he'd be convinced that it was the finger tapping off the side of the violin.

Davey suggested going to see Laughing Keith, who was an expert at getting limbs and heads out of things, and getting them into things too. He looked at the finger through Davey's mirror, and he noticed a small black mark on it. Paul looked at it too, but he couldn't tell what the mark was.

Laughing Keith said, "There's no way I can get it out without damaging the instrument, but I can tape it to the side of the violin so it stops moving about."

"That'd be better than damaging it," Paul said.

Laughing Keith taped the finger to the inside of the violin using tweezers and a scalpel that Davey found in a doctor's surgery. When the job was done, Paul turned the violin over, and he was delighted with the silence. He played the violin every day for the next month, and he was never able to forget about the finger, but as time went by he became less bothered by it. After a month he was used to the idea of body parts in musical instruments. If someone told him that there was an ear in a tuba, he wouldn't have been surprised, and not just because the only tuba player he knows consistently produces a sound with an enthusiasm that can only be explained by believing that he can't hear it.

One night he played the violin and the music drowned out the sound of the heavy rain and the strong wind outside. The sound of the doorbell brought the music to a halt. Paul put the violin in its case and he put the case in a cupboard in the kitchen before opening the door.

A man was standing outside in the rain. He wore a dark grey suit and a blue tie that was held in place by a silver tie clip. He said, "My car broke down and my phone won't work because it got wet in the rain. Can I use your phone?"

"Of course." Paul showed him the phone in the hall.

The man made a phone call, and then he told Paul that his brother was coming to collect him.

"You're welcome to wait here," Paul said. "I have the fire lighting."

"That's very kind of you."

"Will you have a drink? Tea or coffee, or whiskey?"

"I wouldn't say no to a whiskey."

Paul poured two whiskeys. He handed a glass to the stranger. He noticed that the word 'Hate' was tattooed on the fingers of the man's right hand, and the letters 'ove' were on his left hand. The index finger was missing. Paul remembered the strange mark on the finger in his violin. He realised that it was the missing L in 'Love'.

The man noticed Paul's reaction to the missing finger. He smiled and said, "I think you know why I'm really here."

Paul thought about the situation, but all of his thoughts were coloured by a fear of the man before him. When he broke the silence he said, "I'll get the violin."

"So I have got the right house."

Paul went to the kitchen and took the violin from the cupboard. Then he went out through the back door and ran away through the fields.

He went to Darren's house. Darren was surprised to see Paul on his doorstep. "I was going to go to your house," Darren said, "but I thought it was too wet and windy, even with an umbrella and a rain coat. Obviously you had no such worries."

Paul said he had other worries. He told Darren all about his visitor. "What am I going to do?" he said. "I can't avoid this man forever. And I don't want to lose the violin."

"Are you sure he wants the violin?"

"Yes. Or at least he wants his finger back, which amounts to the same thing."

"Maybe he'll pay for it."

"I doubt it. I mean, it's obviously his finger. He wouldn't pay five grand for that. And he didn't seem like the sort of man you could haggle with."

"Maybe there's a way around this. The reason I was going to visit you was because I just came across another interesting violin."

Darren told him about a friend of his called Carol. She had bought an old violin at a car boot sale. When she took the violin home she polished it with furniture polish. She was able to see her own reflection in the back of it, but she thought she could make out the reflection of another face in it too. Darren suggested wearing a black balaclava while looking into the violin, so she'd see the other face without having her own face imposed on it. He had a black balaclava. She asked him where he got it and he said, "My grandmother knitted it for me. She never wanted me to be an accountant."

She put on the balaclava and she looked into the back of the violin. She saw the reflection of a woman's face. The woman looked as if she was in her forties. Carol had never seen her before.

Carol wanted to get rid of the violin. Darren suggested throwing it away, but she felt as if she'd be abandoning the woman in it. If she was going to sell it, she'd have to tell any potential buyers about the reflection, and they wouldn't remain potential buyers for long after that.

Paul stayed at Darren's house that night, and they went to see Carol's violin on the following day. Paul put on the balaclava and looked at the reflection. "She looks very unimpressed," he said. "I wouldn't blame her either."

He showed Carol the finger in his violin, and he told her about the man who called. "I think I can help you with your problem," she said. "I don't know if it'll solve my problem, but we'll see."

They went back to Paul's house. They searched every room, but the man had left. The lights were still on. They noticed a second set of footprints through the muddy ground in Paul's back garden, so the man must have followed Paul when he left with the violin.

"He'll come back again," Paul said, "assuming he wants it that badly. And I got the impression that he wants it that badly."

They waited for him to return. At three o' clock that afternoon the doorbell rang and Paul went to answer it. It was the man they had been waiting for. "Hello again," Paul said. "Sorry about last night. I was called away suddenly. So suddenly I didn't even realise I was being called away until... It was a bit like that film where..."

"Give me the violin."

"Right. You'd better come in so."

Paul took the man into his living room and introduced him to Darren and Carol. He opened the violin case and took out Carol's violin. He gave it to the man and said, "Before you try to retrieve the finger, assuming that's what you're after, I think you should look at the reflection on the back of the violin. You'll need to wear this balaclava so your own reflection doesn't interfere with it."

The man put on the balaclava and looked at the back of the violin. He saw a woman's face looking back at him. She had a stern expression and she was shaking her head. He stared in disbelief at what he saw (they could see it in his eyes). "Delia!" he said, and the woman in the violin stopped shaking her head. He put the violin down and ran away.

They never saw him again, but they heard that he was arrested shortly after he left Paul's house. The police had a checkpoint about half a mile away. They were checking for tax and insurance. They saw a man in a balaclava running down the road. When he saw them he stopped and turned around. They got into their car and chased him.

They arrested him and they took him to the station for questioning. He refused to explain why he was running down a road while wearing a balaclava. They had no evidence that a crime had been committed, so they had to release him, but they kept an eye on him. He left the country on the following day.

Paul tried playing Carol's violin, and he thought that its sound was even more beautiful than the sound from the violin with the finger. So they exchanged violins. He wasn't bothered by the woman's face and she wasn't bothered by the finger. She said she had once seen a rat and lots of little baby rats in a piano, and that a finger in a violin didn't seem so bad in comparison. The back seat of Paul's car, where the dog had given birth, didn't seem so bad when he thought about the rat giving birth in the piano.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking very thoughtful these days, as if he's pondering life's mysteries. His life seems very uncomplicated, but it's difficult to tell what's going on in his mind. The wife's aunt's life seems very complicated, but she believes that all of life's mysteries can be found in a bucket, and the solutions to the mysteries can be found in another bucket. She doesn't have enough curiosity about life to start looking in buckets.

The Blue Radiator

I listened to the speech of the trees in the breeze, and I watched them furiously moving their arms as they spoke. I find trees to be the most convincing of all orators. They have the imposing presence and the wisdom of age. The man down the road who makes lids for ducks' heads is a good public speaker too, but sometimes I wonder if he really has the wisdom he appears to have when he's standing on a stage, making a speech.

My cousin Gary once shared a house with some friends of his. It was an old house. Gary got the master bedroom. There were windows at either end of the room, and a fireplace opposite the bed. Within weeks of Gary moving in, the place was a mess. He wanted to tidy the room, but it had taken weeks of work to create the mess and it seemed as if it would take weeks to clean it up.

He found some blue paint in the shed behind the house and he decided to paint the radiator in his room with it. He thought it would go some way towards alleviating the mess. He often acted on impulses like these and regretted it later, but he liked the radiator. Various hyphenated expressions had been used to describe his room in the past (with the word 'hole' usually to the right of the hyphen), but he thought the radiator added a touch of class to the place. Of course, no one ever said a word about the blue radiator. And 'hole' never left its place next to the hyphen, but its partner on the other side of the hyphen took on a touch more class (it still wasn't marrying beneath itself when it hooked up with 'hole').

He was hoping this aditional class would impress the women he hooked up with. There was one woman in particular he was intent on impressing. Her name was Daphne. When he took her into the room he said, "You can sit down if you want."

She looked around. "No thanks," she said. In her eyes he could see two blank spaces, with her nose acting as a hyphen. They were left blank because they weren't fit for public view.

"Do you like my radiator?" he said.

"It's... blue."

"Yeah. Like the sea. That's why I like it."

But the look on her face didn't change, and she said she just remembered that she had to be somewhere else.

One of Gary's friends knew an interior designer called Rachel. Gary hired her to give his room a make-over. She called around to see him one Saturday morning. She looked as if she'd put a lot of effort into designing her own look. Her hair was blond with red streaks. Hours of work had gone into making it look as if she'd slept in a ditch. To the untrained eye, her clothes would have looked as if they'd been designed by someone untrained who suffers from poor eyesight.

He said he liked her look. She said, "Designing your exterior is a vital part of designing the interior of where you live. It's like a plug going into a socket. Most interior designers just work on the socket. I design the plug as well."

Gary didn't like the sound of that. When he said he liked her look he really meant that other people would like it, and by other people he meant idiots. When he contemplated the thought that something similar could be inflicted on his own exterior he realised that he hated her look. He said, "What do you have in mind for me?"

"I'll have to see the room first. I can't form an opinion on you until I've seen your room. You define where you live and vice versa."

Gary dreaded to think what sort of opinion she was forming as she looked around the room. He said, "You have a free hand here, but I would like to keep the blue radiator."

"It's reassuring to know you don't want to keep the rest of it."

"Do any ideas come to mind?"

"Yes. Ideas come to mind. They always do that. First impressions bring a flood of ideas, and first impressions haven't let me down so far. Bringing those ideas into reality isn't always so easy, but I know the path to take in this case."

She took him shopping for furniture. They bought a coffee table with a glass surface resting on branches that had broken from a tree in a storm. She chose wallpaper that wouldn't have looked out of place in a country house fifty years ago. This could have been said about nearly everything she got for the room. When Gary mentioned this she said, "That's true, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The sum of the parts says an old country house, but the whole will be anything but that. It'll be inescapably modern."

When the room was finished, she took him shopping for clothes. She chose a brown suit and a few different ties to go with it. Most of them were black or dark brown, but he insisted on getting a blue one, like the radiator. She chose a tweed jacket with a matching hat. She also made him buy a pipe.

She said, "Now you need to adapt your lifestyle to suit your look."

"Should I buy a shotgun and go hunting ducks with a dog?"

"No. You've got the wrong context. You'd look completely out of place in the country. You and I could go to a gig together and we'd compliment each other perfectly. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to a gig."

She took him to see a band called 'The Dead Islanders'. She said they were very 'in' right now. The first song the band played was called 'Will he Wonka?' and half of the audience walked out within the first minute of it. They could only guess what the lyrics were because the words that the singer spat out with spit were so indecipherable. The people who walked out obviously guessed that the song was about something they wouldn't approve of. If they'd waited until the end of the song they would have heard him say, "That was about my girlfriend." Half of the remaining half were sure they wouldn't approve of that if they knew what it was, and they walked out too.

But the next song was much slower and they could make out some of the lyrics. It was about a happy polar bear, and it seemed unlikely that the first song would really be objectionable to the people who had walked out. Some people walked out because they objected to anything that the people who had already walked out would approve of. A small group stayed on, and they enjoyed the rest of the gig. The band invited the audience to a party at the end.

Gary and Rachel went along. It was in a house nearby. The place was full of people with interesting looks. They all wore clothes that said something, apart from the ones with no clothes, and that said something too. Rachel told him to put the pipe in his mouth, but he didn't have to smoke it -- it was really just a fashion accessory. He would have said it was strange to use his mouth to hold a pipe he'd never smoke, but fashion accessories and affectations were commonplace amongst the people at the party. Rachel had got his look just right, and he blended in with them. He used old words when he wore his pipe. He looked on and said, "Bawdy. Terribly bawdy."

Before the end of the party, the band had decided that they wanted Gary to be their manager. "You have just the right look to manage a band," the lead singer said to him.

"I know nothing about being a manager."

"We've already gone down the route of hiring managers based on experience and ability, but it's never worked out. They have the scars to prove it. It's time to put style over substance and hire someone based on looks. I have a good feeling about this."

"I do work in a radio station," Gary said. "That's something, I suppose."

"That's more than something. That's a firm confirmation of style over substance. That says we were right to do what we did to the other managers."

Gary agreed to be their manager. He spent many hours travelling with the band in a van. They spent the time arguing or writing songs like 'I'm full of goo and it needs to escape'. He thought it was too sentimental. He was happier when they argued. He'd say things like 'Gentlemen, please. We haven't been living in the trees for some time now'. It was a recurring argument about who came up with the album title 'Some like it hurt'. Occasionally the argument erupted into a fight. Gary's image confined him to remaining cool and calm, which amounted to standing by and watching them fight.

At a music festival, the band got into a fight with a heavy metal band called 'The Little Bee Pies'. The Dead Islanders claimed that The Little Bee Pies weren't really heavy metal at all -- that they were really just art students adopting a pose and the pose was the only thing separating them from the animals. The ease with which The Dead Islanders won the fight would suggest there was some truth in this. The Little Bee Pies saw it as proof that The Dead Islanders were much closer to the animals than they were.

The band started a fight at one of their gigs, and it descended into a riot. They had to leave in a hurry. They were chased through narrow country roads by a van containing the irate owner of the venue and some of his friends and relatives who were always in a state of perfect contentment when hunting quarry in a van. Gary's new exterior concealed his fears. They managed to evade capture when they took a wrong turn and ended up in a hay shed. Their pursuers drove all around the shed but they never thought of looking inside.

Daphne was very impressed with the new look he'd acquired for himself and his room, and with his new role as a band manager. She didn't like listening to the band, and none of her friends liked them either, but they all knew that they were the sort of band they should like. Daphne loved reminding her friends that she knew the manager. She often went with him to gigs.

The band had to take a break from performing when their drummer, who called himself Long Jong Sullivan, injured his arm while trying to see how many people he could fit into the van. This gave Gary time to reflect. He had tried to convince himself that his new lifestyle was exactly what he wanted, but he wasn't happy with the person he'd become. He knew it wasn't really him. He had never felt that he wasn't being himself before, when he was happy being the person defined by his room, which led him to the unpleasant conclusion that he was just a blank space before a hyphen and then a 'hole', and all he can ever achieve in life is to fill in the blank.

But the blue radiator was part of him too. He considered it to be the most important part of his room. He went to see Rachel and he told her that he had to abandon his new image. "I can look back on my old self with some objectivity now," he said. "The radiator was an important part of the socket, so what does that say about the plug?"

"That he's blind."

"It suggests there's a warm side to the plug."

"Did you ever turn the radiator on?"

"No. But a radiator is synonymous with heat."

"Not if they're never turned on. And you made a big deal out of the fact that it was blue. Look at any taps. The hot one is red and the cold one is blue."

"You're just nitpicking."

"There's nothing colder than a cold radiator. When you put your hands on it you expect heat, and you're left disappointed when it's cold. It's defined by its lack of warmth. And the fireplace in your room hasn't been used in years."

"You're looking at these things negatively. A fireplace and a radiator exist to provide warmth. That's how they're defined. And this need for something warm is a reaction against the cold, cynical, style-obsessed world I've been immersed in recently."

"My aunt Sylvia is warm. She knits Aran sweaters for her dogs."

"I'd rather be warm than cool."

"As warm as a cold blue radiator."

"It'll be warm in winter."

"Right. And how are you going to express this in the way you look?"

"I could wear an Aran sweater. A blue one."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. You should think carefully before discarding the suit."

"It's just a pose. I'm not going to collapse into a barely sentient heap if I remove the clothes I wear."

"Clothes are what separates us from the animals. Wear an Aran sweater if you want to show how close you are to sheep."

"I'll wear the pipe as well."

He bought an Aran sweater, and he felt comfortable in it, even though it was too hot. He showed the band his new look. They stared at him in silence, and then the singer smiled and said, "I like it. We've just been talking about a new direction, and you're new look is telling me what direction we should be going in."

The Dead Islanders became a heavy metal band, partly because metal suited their name and partly because their manager with the Aran sweater and the pipe provided the perfect contrast to the band. Gary was happy because it represented his room -- he was the blue radiator and they were the mess. This change of musical direction didn't alienate any of their fans because it wasn't genuine heavy metal. It was just a new pose they wore, a new set of clothes. All of their fans appreciated the need for a new set of clothes.

The moose's head over the fireplace is a very effective orator, even though he never says anything. His distinguished expression as he looks down on us says it all. Words would only get in the way of his message. He's often convinced me of a certain point of view. It was he who talked me out of performing a song I wrote about curtains. Of course, 'talked' would be an overstatement, but he presented a very convincing case.

The Buskers

It's the perfect time of year to be working in the garden. It's too hot to do anything more strenuous than re-arranging flower pots. The wife's aunt refuses to comment on the arrangement of the flower pots. She went to flower arranging classes once, but all she learnt from those was that she couldn't fly. This is why she considers flower arranging to be the most disheartening of all the martial arts.

My uncle Alan plays the harp. When he was in his twenties he travelled all around Europe with a banjo player called Benji. Benji's real name was Derek. People started calling him 'Banjo' and he hated it, but the more he objected, the more entrenched the name became. He eventually accepted it, and he learnt to play the banjo. People started calling him Benji then.

On their trip around Europe, they used to busk or play gigs in bars. One evening they were playing on a street in a town in the south of France. A woman came up to them and said she'd give them two thousand pounds if they played at a party in her house. They assumed it was two thousand Francs, but they went anyway.

Her name was Amelie. Her house was really a chateau, and they realised that yes, it was two thousand pounds. Amelie fell in love with Alan and he fell for her too. When he was young he always fell for the sort of woman who got labelled 'the wrong sort' by those obsessed with surfaces. He was drawn to the sad and lonely types, or the ones who'd call him in the middle of the night, looking for an alibi. She could do either with breathtaking style. She told him the music he made was so sad and beautiful it made her want to be a paperclip. If anyone else had said that, he'd have been looking for the nearest exit.

At the party, Alan and Benji played until dawn. They were joined by other musicians during the night. One man played the guitar. Another played the spoons, or at least that's what he said he was doing when he put twenty spoons down his trousers and danced on a table. They were able to take a break when a woman played the flute for an hour. Benji went for a swim in the pool with an English woman called Chloe. She was a model. She was the only model he'd ever met who was uncontrollably attracted to banjo players. He made sure to get lots of photos of the three of them together (Chloe, Benji and his banjo) to show to the people back home who said he'd only ever attract donkeys with the banjo.

Amelie told Alan and Benji they could stay at her chateau for as long as they wanted. Neither of them could imagine wanting anything else. Benji and Chloe went to the beach every day. Amelie and Alan often went with them, or sometimes they just went for walks through the countryside.

A few weeks before the party, Amelie had played the piano for a man on a horse. She thought it was rude of him not to dismount the horse while she was playing, and she tried to make her feelings known in the way she played. He thought she was trying to express her love for him in the way she played. He believed he was irresistible to women, so even if she'd thrown something sharp at his head he would have thought she was in love with him.

When she finished playing, he looked at her for about ten seconds, and she looked back at him. She thought that by returning his gaze she'd be reinforcing the point she made with her playing. This is the way he interpreted it too, but he thought she was reinforcing her expression of love. His policy towards women who wanted him was to leave them wanting more, so he'd end up getting more. This is why he laughed and rode away as fast as he could.

His name was Claude. He spent the next month gambling and drinking all along the south coast. He thought she'd be pining for him, but she forgot about him because there was no glue as strong as love or hate to keep his picture stuck to the wall in her mind.

When he returned, he met her in the garden in front of her chateau. He was ready to catch her in case she fainted, but she didn't lose her composure at all when she saw him again. She asked him if he'd been away for a while, and then she spoke about the weather and her friend's sunburn. He suspected that she had learnt his game of playing hard to get, and that it was all just an act. He thought his suspicion was confirmed when she invited him to a party.

But as soon as he arrived at the party, Amelie introduced him to Yvette, the friend with the sunburn. She left them alone together. Yvette never stopped talking, and she'd get completely caught up in what she was saying, becoming lost in the world she was creating with her words. Short stories became long, and no one ever stayed around long enough to hear the ending of long stories. A rampaging bull had once failed to return her to the real world, so it was easy to see how she could spend hours in the sun without noticing that she was being burnt.

She told him about a cafe she was in. "The waiter had a limp, and I asked him if he'd injured himself somehow, and he said, 'Sort of. Although it was really someone else who injured me. But I could have prevented that if I had injured him first, so I suppose it is my fault.' And I said to him, 'If you'd injured him first, then surely he'd be more intent on injuring you.' He said he'd never thought of that. I told him he still had a chance to injure the other person. He'd never thought of that either. It was like a sudden revelation to him. He went over to another waiter and punched him. I felt really guilty because I don't believe in injuring other people at all. I'll leave that to the sun." She paused to shake her fist at the ceiling. "I told the other waiter that they should just shake hands, but I don't think he even heard what I said." This was the most interesting part of the story. It went on for another hour. She spent most of this time talking about the waiter's eyebrows.

Amelie spent the evening with Alan, which annoyed Claude almost as much as Yvette annoyed him. Yvette was completely insult-proof, and he hated people like that. She only laughed and said 'it's true' every time he insulted her. He got the impression that Amelie had left them together in the hope of forming a couple, but then he thought that this was just another example of her playing hard to get, and he wasn't going to let her beat him at his own game. This is why he seduced Yvette. It was surprisingly easy, even by his standards, although the sunburn did present some difficulties.

Amelie was delighted to see Claude and Yvette getting on so well. Obviously Claude thought she was just pretending to be delighted. She invited him to a picnic. Alan and Yvette were there too. They sat in the shade of a tree in a small field full of wild flowers. It was surrounded by woodland. They could hear the sound of a stream nearby. Claude was hoping to get a chance to be alone with Amelie, but she left with Alan to explore the ruins of a castle, leaving Yvette and Claude alone again. He was left alone with her when they went to the races too.

Amelie owned a small house on the side of a mountain near the chateau. She loved the views, and she loved the place even more when it was hidden beneath a veil of mist. She could spend hours listening to the silence then. She often went there with Alan. One day, as they were walking along a path on the mountain, they met a group of women who described themselves as a 'tour party'. If they'd described themselves as 'sewer rats' Amelie would have been more welcoming, but she found that they were all very nice despite the way they defined themselves. She invited them back to the house on the mountainside, and she tried to talk them out of this definition as a 'tour party'. She convinced them to describe themselves as 'scientists' instead. She told them they could stay in the house for as long as they wanted. Yvette became their tour guide ('head of the department' is the title Amelie gave her), and she showed the scientists all the sights in the area. Claude was glad to get away from her. It gave him more time to focus on Amelie, but she was still showing no interest in him. He was baffled by this.

She had a party in the house on the mountainside one evening. As she listened to Alan play the harp, smiling lovingly at him, Claude went over to her and said, "Do you want me to kill him?"

"No," she said emphatically, and she stared at him to reinforce the point.

He smiled and nodded before leaving.

Alan left his harp in the house after the party, and he went back on the following day to get it. The mountain was covered in mist. Claude overheard Alan say he was going to get the harp, and he saw his chance. There was a cliff near the house, and there was every chance that Alan could have an unfortunate fall. Claude went up ahead of him.

As Alan was climbing the path towards the house, he heard Yvette's voice. She was talking to the scientists. He heard her say, "So I didn't know if they were talking about the red one or the blue one or the thing stuck to the ceiling. But to make a long story's shirt and knit it little mittens and socks, and buy it shoes, and trousers too, and give it a little straw hat..."

Alan wanted to avoid her, so he took a different, longer route to the house. He got his harp, and he headed back on the shorter route, but he stopped when he saw Claude, who was standing at the top of a cliff, looking down. He was looking out for Alan. Alan didn't like Claude because he got the impression that Claude didn't like him. He tiptoed away, and he went down on the other path.

Claude remained completely still as he listened out for any sound of Alan's approach. When he heard the sound of the scientists laughing behind him he turned around suddenly. He lost his footing on the wet rock and he fell down the cliff. Yvette and the others heard him calling for help. They went to the cliff and looked down. He was hanging onto a ledge below them. Yvette always kept a cool head in these situations. She went to the house and got some rope. She tied one end to a tree and she threw the other end over the cliff. Claude held onto it. Yvette and the other women pulled him up.

He was ashamed to be rescued by women, and the fact that they were scientists only made it worse. He finally gave up on Amelie when he saw how unconcerned she was by the story of his brush with death. She was more interested in congratulating Yvette and the others for advancing the cause of science.

Amelie's relationship with Alan didn't last much longer. She fell for a violinist who didn't have shoes and he despised wealth, but he adapted to life in the chateau easily enough. Chloe lost interest in Benji when a bigger banjo player came along. So Alan and Benji recommenced their trip around Europe, playing on streets, falling in love, running away from duels and so forth.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the long summer days. The sky outside the window is more entertaining than anything on TV in the evenings. The wife's uncle says he spent a good part of every day in front of windows when he was living in Austria. He once saw an owl in the window's soul. Someone suggested that he was looking at his own reflection on the glass, and that he really saw the owl in himself. The idea appealed to him, and he spent a lot of time in trees, where he met some fascinating people and very nearly got married.