'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Figgy's House


I spent half an hour following a blackbird around the garden. He searched the lawns for food. Sometimes he perched on a branch and surveyed the ground beneath him. My grandfather often spent summer evenings looking for birds around the garden. He once spent an entire weekend looking for a snake that my grandmother claimed to have seen, but it turned out to be a copper pipe. He enjoyed the chase anyway. He was assisted in his search by a man who claimed to be a snake charmer, but he wasn't very good at it. He was bitten almost on a daily basis, mostly by women. His snake charming techniques were devoid of charm when used on the opposite sex.


My cousin Charlie used to take a shortcut through the fields to get to the pub. He'd follow the same path on the way back after midnight. On his way home one night he was walking around the edge of a forest when he met Figgy, one of his neighbours. Figgy was looking at his hands. Charlie pointed out that he could do this from the comfort of his own home, but he said his home hadn't been so comfortable since it caught fire.


A gravedigger called Jerome emerged from the trees. He had a shovel in his hands and a satisfied look on his face, as if he'd just dug a particularly good grave. He told them the grave was intended for a man known as Moondalf. Moondalf claimed to be a wizard, and he always carried a staff, but this was just a way to defend himself against the husbands or boyfriends of the women he allowed under his cloak. Jerome suspected that his girlfriend, Ingrid, had been let under the cloak.


Figgy was nervous. He had let Ingrid underneath something as well. She was surprised by what she found there, but she didn't run away.


Moondalf used this path every night, and Jerome was hoping to intercept him. They had to wait another ten minutes for the wizard to arrive. He wasn't in the least bit surprised to see Jerome. "I knew you'd be here," he said. "I saw this scene hours ago."


"Then you'll already know what I'm going to do to you."


"I know what you're going to try to do to me. But you don't know how you're going to fail. It'll be a surprise for you. These chaps will applaud my magic act, but you won't be able to applaud because your hands will be tied to something."


"You're all talk. Words are the only thing you can conjure."


"Who do you think started that fire in Figgy's house?"


"You don't need magic to start a fire."


"You do if you're two miles away with a lady friend who begs you not to leave because she's feeling peculiar."


"If you're referring to Ingrid, you'll be starting your fires from six feet under ground."


"I mention a woman who feels peculiar and you immediately think of your girlfriend. Is that the effect you have on her?"


Figgy inched away as they argued. He started running after he disappeared into the forest, but he didn't get far. He fell into a grave. They heard his scream and they went into the forest. When they saw Figgy in the grave, Moondalf said, "I did that."


"It was me who dug the grave," Jerome said.


"And it was me who sent him to it."


"What have you got against Figgy? First you set fire to his house and then you send him to a grave."


"I'm not at liberty to divulge."


"You had nothing to do with the fire or with Figgy ending up in the grave. If a dog walked into a lamp post you'd take responsibility for it."


"Dogs don't walk into lamp posts by accident."


"I'd believe you use some sort of magic when it comes to women. I've seen dogs sniffing around your cloak. In my experience, women are repulsed by the smells that dogs love, and vice versa."


"I'm not surprised you have experience of that."


"You could make a fortune if you taught people the magic trick you use on women."


"It's a natural gift. I make them feel weak at the knees. You make them feel peculiar."


"Why did you send Figgy to your grave?"


"There's a reason for everything. It'll become apparent over time."


They waited for over half an hour, mostly in silence. Figgy started looking at his hands as he waited in the grave. Moondalf said, "Have you ever seen a labradonkey walk into a van? That wasn't an accident. Although the creation of the labradonkey was an unfortunate mishap."


They heard a voice. It was Ingrid, and she was calling out Figgy's name. When she saw Jerome, Moondalf and Charlie she said, "I was just passing by Figgy's house and it was still on fire, so I thought I should let him know."


"Thanks," Figgy said.


Jerome and Moondalf started arguing again. They didn't see Ingrid helping Figgy out of the grave, and they didn't notice the two of them sneaking away together. Charlie noticed and he guessed what was going on. He was hoping that Jerome and Moondalf wouldn't come to the same conclusion, but when they finally stopped arguing and noticed that Ingrid and Figgy had left, they put two and two together. "I'll kill him," Jerome said.


"I'll get there first," Moondalf said. "Only I have the power of life and death." He took off his cloak and turned it inside out. It was jet black on the other side. He put it on and pulled up the hood. "Tonight, Mathew, I will be Death," he said.


"Who's Mathew?"


"Never mind."


They walked through the woods towards Figgy's house. Charlie went with them because he wanted to protect Figgy.


A group of hunters had been hunting a panther for five years, but they'd never found it. They had never considered the possibility that the man who first reported the sighting was just a man with a poor sense of perspective who'd seen a black cat. The hunters were in the woods that night. They inched forward very slowly when they heard the sound of Jerome, Moondalf and Charlie walking through the woods.


Moondalf heard the sound of the hunters. He crouched and inched forward very slowly. One of the hunters saw him and he thought he'd finally found his quarry. He shot a tranquilliser dart at Moondalf.


The hunters were delighted at first, but then they remembered that panthers don't use swear words. They ran away. Moondalf said, "I've been bitten," as he fell to the ground, before falling into a deep sleep. Jerome was terrified. Maybe this Mathew was to blame, he thought.


Charlie suspected that the hunters were behind it, but he didn't mention this. Instead he said they should carry Moondalf to Figgy's house.


There were no lights on in Figgy's house, but there was plenty light from the fire. Jerome went to the front door and rang the bell. Figgy's black cat was asleep on the roof of the porch. The heat of the fire made it a comfortable bed, but the cat woke up suddenly when a spark landed on him. He jumped onto Jerome, who started screaming.


The hunters had run away after shooting Moondalf, but after thinking about it they realised they should make sure the man they shot was okay. They followed Jerome and Charlie to Figgy's house. When one of the hunters saw the black cat attack Jerome he shot at the cat because he thought Jerome would be torn to pieces. The realisation that domestic cats are too small to tear men to pieces came shortly after the realisation that he'd actually shot Jerome. The hunters ran away again.


Jerome felt the dart in his back and he thought he'd been bitten by the cat. This was his last thought before he slipped into unconsciousness. Figgy and Ingrid came out of the house, and Charlie explained to them what had happened. Figgy wanted to put Moondalf and Jerome into the grave to frighten them, but Charlie had an even more diabolical idea: put them in each other's arms. Charlie was able to put out the fire too. All they really needed was a few buckets of water.


Moondalf and Jerome were afraid of Figgy after this. They thought his black cat had bitten them and made them do things that would be forever hidden beneath the veil of amnesia. They were always nervous around Figgy. They were nervous around each other too.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys wearing his top hat. The wife bought it for him in a second hand shop. It reminded the wife's uncle of a wedding, but everything is reminding him of weddings these days. He's asked lots of women to marry him so far this year, but only one of them said 'yes', and she thought he said 'Will you carry me?'. She's six-foot-five and she weighs seventeen stone, so she was able to carry him with ease. He enjoyed it, and so did she.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Hotel


It rains every day. This is typical January weather. Instead of going out in the garden I've been cleaning out the attic. I found some plans my grandfather made for an extension to the house. He wanted to add another eight rooms. All of these rooms would have been used to display his collection of cuckoo clocks, but the extension was never built. He would have struggled to get planning permission. I've been trying to get planning permission for a sand castle since I was seven.


My uncle Alan spent some time working as a bar man when he was young. The bar was in a hotel in the country. They didn't have many guests in the winter. There weren't many tourists at that time of the year, but sometimes a conference would be held at the hotel, or they'd get groups of people, like artists or hill-climbers. Even when there were no guests, some of the locals would go to the bar in the hotel, and there would always be customers in the restaurant.


The manager of the hotel was a woman called Delia. She rarely said more than what she had to say, apart from the ever-present 'please' or 'thank you'. She never got angry or showed the slightest sign of annoyance. She dealt with all situations in the same calm manner, whether it was dealing with a complaint or telling the chef to remove the meat cleaver from the ceiling. The staff knew little about her. No one could remember ever having a proper conversation with her.


The assistant manager was called Dan. He always tried to remain calm and civil in his assistant manager's role, and for the most part he succeeded, but he was a different person outside of the role. He was only in the role when he was within earshot of the guests, and he was very firmly rooted in the shoes of an assistant manager when Delia was nearby. But on all other occasions the smoking, swearing Dan would come out. The staff preferred the company of the off-duty Dan.


Delia went away for a weekend one January and Dan was in charge. There were no guests in the hotel. It was snowing outside, so none of the regulars made it to the bar. Dan sat at the bar with Amanda, who was one of the maids. Alan served them. They were talking about Delia. Alan said, "I wonder what her room looks like."


Dan said, "I have a master key that opens every door in the hotel."


"Have you looked in my room?" Alan said.


"Of course I have."


"What about mine?" Amanda said.


Dan paused before answering 'no'.


"What about Delia's?"


"No." There was no pause this time.


"Why not?"


"I don't know. I'd be too nervous. She makes me nervous when she's around so I'm not going to ruin the break I get while she's away by making myself nervous."


"Why would you be nervous when she's not here?"


"I don't know. I suppose it's a feeling that she could return at any time."


"Well she's not going to return tonight," Alan said. "Let's have a look in her room."


Dan was reluctant at first, but they talked him into it.


They went into her room, and the first thing they noticed was a poster of a country band. The band consisted of four men and two women, all dressed as cowboys or cowgirls. They were called 'The Longford Ranchers'. When Alan had a closer look at the poster he realised that one of the women was Delia. They found her costume in the wardrobe. They found some records too, and a video of a gig in Sligo. They watched it on the TV in the bar. Delia was the lead singer of the band.


Dan's uncle Derry was big into country music. Dan phoned him and asked about The Longford Ranchers. Derry spent the next hour telling stories about the Irish country music scene. He said that Delia's band were popular a few years earlier. They used to travel all around the country, but then they split up.


A few days later, when Delia was helping Alan close up the bar, Dan casually mentioned the band. He told her that he'd been talking to his uncle about country music, and that his uncle told him about The Longford Ranchers.


"Ye were in my room, weren't ye?" Delia said.


"No, no. We heard all of this from my uncle. I had no knowledge of the band before he mentioned it."


"One of ye left a whiskey glass in there."


"Oh. Ah... Sorry... So how come the band split up?"


"We used to tour the country in a van. Tensions are inevitable when you put six people in a van for long periods of time. Our guitarist, Derek, used to sell bags of dog food from the back of the van, so that made things more cramped and more tense. He'd do anything for a bit of extra cash, but he'd never spend it. He wouldn't even buy us a drink. He didn't care that we all had to fit into the van with our instruments and gear and enough food to feed fifty dogs for a week. One night he took a woman into the back of the van after a gig. He thought we were in the pub, but the owner had closed it early. Actually he closed it on time, but that was considered early. Derek didn't know that the rest of us were waiting outside. We heard everything. It was funny, but then on the following day no one could look him in the eye. Denny, our bass player, made two sock puppets and he used them to dramatise the events in the van. His little play started with the Derek puppet telling a story about the time he wrestled a horse, and it ended with him in tears. The puppet representing the woman was avoiding eye contact and saying, 'I wouldn't worry about it.'


"Obviously Derek was mortified when he realised we had heard the whole thing. Denny said we wouldn't tell another living soul about it, as long as Derek gave us a share of the profits from his dog food business. He agreed to give us ten percent each.


"There was another band called 'Terry Racket and the Tornadoes'. We used to support them in the early days, but we ended up being rivals. We were always playing tricks on each other, like letting the air out of the tyres in each other's vans, or putting thirty dead chickens into the back of the van. The chickens ended up as dog food. We met them at a restaurant once, and Terry Racket said to Derek, 'Have you had any luck with your stories about horse wrestling?' The Tornadoes laughed. We found out later that the woman Derek had convinced to join him in the van was the cousin of the drummer from The Tornadoes, but at the time Derek assumed that Denny had told Terry. Derek punched Denny, and Denny punched him back. They fought in the car park of the restaurant, and that was the end of the band. Even when we found out how Terry heard the story, there was too much tension for all of us to be able to get back into the same van."


"It's a pity that it ended like that," Alan said. "Ye were very good. I mean, I've heard ye were very good. Dan's uncle told him."


One of the regulars organised a Karaoke night in the hotel bar to raise money for charity. They convinced Delia to take part, and they managed to talk her into wearing her cowgirl outfit as well. She was nervous because she hadn't sung on stage in years. She needed a few strong drinks to build up enough courage to be able to face the audience. Alan poured her the drinks and he watched them disappear in seconds. He was worried that she had taken too much. She was starting to slur her words.


But he didn't need to worry. As soon as she got up on stage she was fine. It was a great performance, and she got a standing ovation. As soon as she got off the stage she went straight to the bar and told Alan to pour her a double whiskey.


The owner of the hotel chose a bad time to call. His name was Nick. He owned a chain of hotels, and he visited each one about once a month. When he arrived in the middle of the karaoke night he saw the manager wearing a cowgirl costume and leaning against the bar with a whiskey glass in her hand. He asked her what was going on, and she did her best to explain, but she hadn't got far when he said two words that made tears well up in her eyes: "You're fired."


Nick was spending the night in the hotel with his wife. About midnight, Dan was walking past a room on the first floor and he heard Nick's voice. This confused him, because he was sure that Nick and his wife were staying in a room on the floor above. The room next door was empty. Dan went into this one. He put a glass to the wall, and he heard Nick talking, but the woman he was with wasn't his wife.


On the following morning, Dan got Amanda to make two sock puppets. When Nick and his wife arrived for breakfast, Dan told him about what a great success the karaoke night had been, and he suggested a talent night. To demonstrate this he got Alan and Amanda to perform a puppet show. Alan's puppet was playing the part of Nick. Amanda's puppet was an anonymous woman. Alan had lines like 'My wife doesn't understand me'.


Nick put a stop to the show when he realised that it was based on real events. He took Dan to one side and said, "What do you want?"


"If you don't want your wife to see the rest of this performance, bring back Delia. I'm sure your wife will be able to identify you, even when you're represented by a sock. I'd say there's a good chance she'll recognise what the sock says when it gets excited."


Nick apologised to Delia and asked her to come back. He even gave her a pay rise when he saw Alan's sock-covered hand waving at him.


The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't like country music. He's listening to a lot of Bach at the moment. The wife's uncle says he nearly married a country singer once. He pretended he was rich, and she had a soft spot for men with money. That soft spot was in her vegetable garden. He'd been hit over the head with a shovel so often in the past that it didn't have much effect on him. He let her do it twenty times before he said something about it.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sugar


I've seen some beautiful birds in the garden over the past few days. I'm not a bird-watcher, so I couldn't tell you what type of birds they were. The wife's uncle says that one of his friends has given up bird-watching and taken up bird-wetting. He shoots them with a water pistol. It gives him the thrill of shooting birds without the guilt of killing something so beautiful. He still hasn't given up bed-watching.


My cousin Alan was walking down a quiet street at the edge of the city one day. There was a high wall next to the pavement. When he came across a hole in the wall he looked through it, and he could see daylight at the other side. He remembered a story his cousin Hector told about putting his hand into a hole and finding a silver cigarette lighter, and Alan couldn't resist putting his hand into the hole in the wall. He was just about able to squeeze his hand all the way through. He moved his fingers around at the other side, but he couldn't feel anything. When he tried to remove his arm from the wall he found that he couldn't get his hand back through the hole. He was afraid of cutting his hand or dislocating his thumb if he pulled too hard.


He said, "I really, really wish I hadn't put my hand into this hole."


He heard a woman's voice from the other side of the wall. She said, "That's a politically naive reaction."


"What would be a reaction that isn't politically naive?" Alan said.


"I don't know. I suppose it would be one that has a reference to politics, and that reference wouldn't be naive."


"What if I said, 'I really, really wish I hadn't put my hand into this hole and I'm ideologically opposed to privatisation in the health service.' Would that be politically enlightened?"


"Yeah."


"But if I had to add a statement about politics to make it politically enlightened, wouldn't that suggest that the first statement was devoid of any political content, rather than being politically naive?"


"I suppose so. I don't really know."


"Why did you say it was a politically naive reaction?"


"Most people are intimidated by that. I'll be more careful about saying it in the future."


"Are you at the other side of the wall?"


"Yeah. I put my hand into a hole too, and it's stuck."


Alan looked down the street and he saw a waving hand sticking out of the wall. He waved at her too. She said her name was Sophie.


"We must look a bit stupid," she said.


"We could pretend we're protesting about some political issue."


"Like what?"


"I don't know."


"What about privatisation in the health service?"


"No. People would say we're being politically naive to protest about that by putting her hands in a wall."


"That's what I'd have said."


"But I think I know just the thing we could protest about."


A general election was just a few weeks away. Alan's mother, Bridget, was sick of canvassers calling to her door. A man known as Bingo had been an elected representative in that constituency for nearly thirty years. He was a member of the governing party. When he called to Bridget's door she said, "Before you say anything, I'll only consider voting for you if you have a coherent policy on sugar? Do you have such a thing?"


"Sugar?"


"I'll take that as a 'no'," she said, and she closed the door.


She thought this would be an effective way of getting rid of canvassers, and it had worked on the others, but Bingo would do anything for a vote. He came up with a position on sugar. He didn't want to be pro or anti sugar in case he alienated anyone, so he came up with a policy that related to a very specific instance. He said that people with sugar in their shoes shouldn't be allowed look after animals.


When passers-by asked Alan and Sophie what they were doing they said they were protesting against Bingo's policy on sugar. Other people joined in the protest, and then the media started arriving. Alan was interviewed on the news that evening. He said that Bingo's policy was discriminatory and it was based on an outrageous prejudice that had no place in the modern Ireland. A man who owned horses arrived at the protest, and he said he often kept sugar in his shoes because sugar thieves would never think of looking there.


Bingo's party wanted him to back down, but he refused because he thought it would be humiliating. He had already backed down when they told him to apologise for calling a nurse a Nazi (as he tried to explain at the time, he didn't call her a Nazi -- he said her behaviour was Nazi-like). The press put pressure on him to explain why he came up with his sugar policy. They suggested that he was hiding some incident from his past, something relating to animals and a person with sugar in their shoes. He insisted that he had nothing to hide. He said he'd never try to conceal anything and his life was like an open book.


This was when his former mistress came forward. They had been together for seventeen years. He had always told her he'd leave his wife for her, but he never did. He spent seventeen years doing his best to conceal her and then he left her. Hearing him say he'd never conceal anything was what made her come forward.


Bingo's popularity nose-dived, but he was still refusing to back down on the sugar issue. He was trying to highlight this stance in the hope that it would deflect attention from his former mistress, but this strategy didn't work.


Alan and Sophie were getting tired of keeping their hands in the wall, but they didn't want to back down either. They had both taken their hands out of the wall and gone to get something to eat in the night while no one was around, but they couldn't stay away for too long. After spending thirty-six hours on the street they knew they'd have to find some other way out of it. They were feeling guilty about the part they played in the election. Bingo might lose his seat because of them. So they came up with a plan that would show Bingo in a positive light and would also allow them to get their hands out of the wall.


Alan got his sister, Rachel, to contact Bingo. When she told him about the plan he was willing to give it a go. Sophie knew a film director who had just finished work on a film that starred a German Shepherd. The plan was to film a scene in which Bingo would save Sophie from being attacked by a vicious dog. Alan wrote the script for the scene.


Alan had seen Sophie for the first time in a picture in the newspaper. He had never before seen a woman as beautiful as her with her hand stuck in something. Bingo had a weakness for beautiful women. When he arrived for the filming, Alan heard him talking to Sophie at the other side of the wall, and he could sense that weakness in Bingo's voice.


In the script, Bingo rationally discussed the issue of sugar with Sophie. He said he admired her for her protest, and she said she admired him. When they were filming the scene, she was too nice to him because she wanted to make him look good. He started flirting with her, and he completely forgot about the script. He was just about to ask her out to dinner when the dog arrived. She said, "Oh no, a vicious dog. I'm going to have to take my hand out and run away."


He was supposed to say, "Stay where you are. I'll defend you and your principles." And then he should have turned to the dog and said, "Leave her alone!" The dog would have walked away with a whimper (he was trained to do this for the film). But Bingo just told the dog to eff off. The dog was trained to attack when he heard 'eff off', and he did. He jumped up on Bingo and held onto his arm. Bingo's overcoat protected him, but he unleashed a stream of obscenities.


Bingo's popularity soared after the film was shown on TV. Alan and Sophie felt guilty because they had helped him get elected, but thanks to proportional representation, the candidates from all the main parties got elected, so everyone was happy, even members of the party that lost the general election.


The moose's head over the fireplace is very astute in political matters, but he has an aversion to politicians. It's a bit like his skill at predicting the winners of races despite his aversion to horses. Horses are more dignified than politicians because they don't talk, apart from Mr. Ed. I'd vote for a politician who didn't talk, someone who retained a dignified silence on all issues. I'd vote for a horse too.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

The Stupidists


We've had some snow, a lot of rain and some very strong winds recently. The wind makes a magnificent sound when it plays in the garden. I could listen to it for hours. My grandfather used to play the ear trumpet in a silent jazz band. They did soundtracks for silent films. He loved playing the ear trumpet in the shed on windy evenings because it was such a beautiful form of silence.


My cousin Gary once fell in love with a woman called Glenda. 'Love' might be overstating it. It was her looks that made him feel the way he did. He saw her in the pub one evening and he didn't see anything else in his mind for a few days. It took him another few weeks before he steadied his nerves enough to be able to speak to her, and when he did he soon realised that she was nothing like the woman he had imagined. She was very intelligent, and Gary thought he'd need to appear intelligent himself if he wanted to attract her.


His friend, Martin, had fallen in 'love' with her too, and he was trying to appear intelligent and well-read. They'd arrive in the pub with copies of books by Sartre, and they'd try to mention Sophocles in their conversations, hoping she'd overhear them.


In the beer garden one evening, Gary came across Martin reading poetry. "I once saw a monkey with an umbrella," Gary said. "For some reason I'm reminded of that when I see you with a poetry book."


"I once saw a man reading a French version of one of Sartre's novels, and he doesn't know any French. That man was you."


"She doesn't know I don't know French."


"It won't take her long to find out. I might accidentally say something to you in French and let you struggle your way out of that hole."


"You don't know French either."


"You can barely speak English."


"I'm fluent in this language." Gary pushed Martin.


"Be careful of what you say, or you'll get an unexpected response." Martin pushed Gary back. Within seconds they were fighting, but they stopped when they noticed that Glenda was looking at them. She smiled.


Martin said to Gary, "That's what you get for claiming that Stendhal is better than Balzac."


"What? What did I get? An idiot fighting like a girl?"


"Why couldn't you beat an idiot fighting like a girl?"


"I beat you into a pulp."


"Why am I still here then? And where's the pulp that supposedly took my place?"


Glenda had gone by then. Gary knew he'd never impress her by fighting, and he was starting to suspect that pretending to be well-read wouldn't work either.


A friend of theirs had an art exhibition in a small gallery over a cafe. When Gary arrived, Martin was standing in front of a painting and trying to look thoughtful.


"Still wasting your time nurturing this supposed intellect of yours," Gary said. "It's sad, in many ways. And in many other ways it's funny. Not that it matters to me what it is or isn't or could be if a kangaroo had it. Very few things matter to me now, but those few things matter a lot."


"There's nothing 'supposed' about my intellect."


"If you need an intellect to play with like a child playing with a rattler, then fine. Your intellect will make a perfectly good rattler. I've realised that it's all completely pointless. When you reach a higher level of intellect you can see just how pointless intellectualism is. I've reached that level."


"I reached it months ago."


"You haven't shown it. I haven't seen you do anything stupid in the conventional sense of the word, though your failed attempts at intellectualism have been quite stupid."


"If it's stupid to be intellectual, then my failed attempts at intellectualism must make me clever, by your logic."


"Quite possibly. By my logic. Now that I value stupidity I don't care if I contradict myself." Gary broke a plate off his head.


"I could out-stupid you any day."


"You couldn't out-stupid anyone. You're not clever enough."


"We'll see about that."


Martin jumped through an open window. This is how he won the heart of Glenda. She went to see him in hospital, and after he went home she visited his house every day and made him soup. Being helpless was a much better way to win her affections than being clever or being stupid, and she also found something deeply appealing in the fact that he had jumped out the window of an art gallery.


The moose's head over the fireplace loves the sound of the wind as well. He looks as if he's lost in another world when he hears the gale blowing outside. He's probably imagining the dancing trees and the dark clouds rolling by above. The wife's uncle says he knows a man who claims to have held onto a weather balloon in a storm and been blown fifty miles away. During his flight he was shot at on more than one occasion and he came close to crash landing in a quarry. It sounds unlikely, but he has led a life a lot like James Bond's, although he's led his in a graveyard.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

New Year's Eve


Our new year's celebrations were relatively quiet this year. John, one of our neighbours, had fireworks at midnight, but they were really just an excuse to scare off the aliens. He says he was once kidnapped by aliens, and they tried to shove something up his nose, but luckily he already had some carrots up there.


My aunt Bridget once decided to have a New Year's Eve fancy dress party. She hired a chef called Edgar to do the catering. His mother was one of Bridget's best friends. He was a brilliant chef, but he believed that all of his ability came from his moustache. He was afraid that he'd lose his skills with food if he cut his moustache, so he let it grow wild. Many people complained about it because they didn't like the idea of their food being prepared by a man who had an untrimmed hedge on his face. It wasn't the hedge itself that frightened them -- it was what might be living in the hedge. The complaints only made him bitter. He started drinking a lot, and he argued with people. He often ended up arguing with himself. "I don't need you," he once said to himself. "I don't need any of ye. There's only one of me. Today you'll say there's only one and tomorrow you'll say there's twenty when there's only three, and the day after that, someone will be complaining about the owls."


Bridget was concerned about the moustache, but she didn't want to say anything to Edgar. Her son, Ronan, and her two daughters, Rachel and Nicola, decided to do something about the moustache before the party. They thought they'd be doing Edgar a favour if they could show him that his skills had nothing to do with his facial hair, so they came up with the following plan: they'd get him drunk and shave off the moustache. They'd replace it with a fake moustache, and Edgar would cook a meal. The food would be up to his usual high standard, and then they'd reveal the truth about his moustache, proving that he didn't need anything on his face to be able to cook.


The first part of the plan worked perfectly. They got Edgar drunk on the night before the party, and while he slept they shaved off the moustache. Rachel was a member of an Amateur Dramatics Society, and they had used the fake moustache in a play about robots taking over the world. They glued it to Edgar's face and trimmed it so it looked like the real one.


Edgar woke up with a terrible hangover. The thought of eating food seemed abhorrent to him. The thought that his purpose in life was to prepare food made him depressed. He wondered what the point of it all was, and he told Ronan, Rachel and Nicola that he was going to cut off his moustache. He found a nail scissors, but they managed to stop him before he started cutting and realised that the moustache wasn't real. "You just need some coffee," Rachel said. "That's all that's wrong. When you're over the hangover you'll be hungry, and you'll want to be a chef again. You'll need your moustache then."


"Everyone else says I don't need the moustache at all. In fact, you once said that the moustache was growing inward and affecting my brain, and for the sake of its own survival it was making me think I needed it."


"That was just a joke. Maybe you do need the moustache. There's no point in taking any chances. Don't do anything rash."


They managed to convince him not to cut off the moustache. He felt better by the evening, and he started work on the food for the party.


The guests started arriving at eight o' clock. My cousin Albert came as a hedgehog to stop people sneaking up behind him. He has a phobia of people sneaking up behind him. Uncle Cyril was dressed as a dishevelled Santa. He claimed that this is how Santa would look after Christmas, but it was really just an excuse to look dishevelled. He always ended up looking worse at the end of the night, and it wasn't always down to drink. He once got attacked by seagulls. Aunt Joyce accused him of stealing their fish, but he had no interest in their fish.


The food and drink brought a warm glow to all of the guests. Aunt Beatrice started singing a song about a rainbow she had to shoot. My cousin Jane lost her watch, and Claudia, her best friend, said, "I blame Kevin Kline," just because she liked saying, "I blame Kevin Kline." She had said it once earlier in the evening and in her slightly drunk head it sounded nice. She laughed at it. With every drink she had, it sounded funnier. Jane thought that Kevin Kline was the man in the top hat talking to the hedgehog, but he wasn't the sort of person to take watches.


Edgar was over his hangover and he was enjoying his work in the kitchen, but the heat of the stove melted the glue that held his moustache in place, and it fell off into a pot. Edgar started screaming. Some people came into the kitchen to see what was going on. Rachel managed to calm him down. She used a fork to take the moustache out of the pot and she said, "That was just a fake moustache. You couldn't have been getting your ability from that."


Edgar was furious. He said, "How did I end up with a fake moustache?"


"I don't know," Rachel said. "Do you remember shaving off your..."


"Of course I didn't shave off my own moustache and replace it with a fake one."


"Then someone else must have done it."


"Why would someone shave off my moustache?"


"Maybe they wanted the hair."


"Or maybe they wanted to take my powers."


"But you haven't really lost your powers."


"What if they drain away when someone else starts using my moustache?"


This thought made Edgar start drinking again. He never considered the possibility that someone might have taken his moustache to tidy his face because he didn't think it was untidy. Claudia thought she knew who did it. She said, "I, aha... I bl ha ha ha ha ha... I blame aha ha K' aha ha ha ha ha... I claim Bevin aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Kevin Kline."


Edgar pictured a man with a moustache, but he already knew that much.


My cousin Craig had been working on a magic act, and he came to the party in his costume. He used puppets to perform the tricks. One of the puppets was dressed like a magician, and this one could saw another puppet in half. When Edgar saw the magician puppet he thought he'd found out what happened to his moustache. The puppet had a huge moustache that extended well beyond its ears. Edgar wanted retribution. He went to the kitchen and he returned shortly afterwards with a meat cleaver. He cut the puppet's head off. The head dropped to the ground and Craig started screaming as he held up a stump where his hand should have been. Blood flowed from the stump like a fountain. Edgar fainted.


The scream spread throughout the room, but then Craig started laughing. He removed the plastic stump to reveal his real hand beneath it. There was a fake hand in the puppet's head. Part of his act involved cutting off the puppet's head with a guillotine, and he'd frighten the audience by pretending it had gone tragically wrong.


Only Craig found it funny, and Rachel pointed out that Edgar would be furious when he regained consciousness and realised what had happened. So they tried to pretend that the incident never happened. Craig replaced the head on the puppet's body, and he hid the fake hand and the stump. He took the moustache off the puppet as well.


When Edgar came around, a look of horror spread all over his face when he saw Craig, but Craig just said 'hello' (through the puppet).


"Your hand," Edgar said.


"What about my hand?" the puppet said.


Edgar pulled the puppet off Craig's hand. "Is something wrong?" Craig said.


"I... I think I must be... Maybe the loss of the moustache has affected my head."


"That's quite possible," Craig said. "I knew a man who shaved off his beard once and it had a serious affect on him for a few weeks. He couldn't go outside by day, and when he was inside he drew all of the curtains and he wouldn't turn on any lights. He'd be horrified if you shone a light on his face. He used to talk to the mice in his house too, but I think he always did that."


Edgar saw the fake hand in Craig's pocket and he figured out what was going on. This was all just a practical joke, and he was the victim. And Craig was the perpetrator. He took the fake hand and used it to slap Craig across the face. He spent the first few hours of the new year chasing Craig all around the house with the hand, which proved to be much more entertaining than Craig's magic act.


The moose's head over the fireplace likes fancy dress parties. We often dress him up as Sherlock Holmes because he enjoys smoking a pipe. I don't know if he appreciates the irony of having a deer stalker hat on his antlers. The wife's uncle says he once went to a fancy dress party as a bear, and he was pursued by a woman dressed as a hunter. He allowed himself to be caught, and he inadvertently became ensnared in an engagement too. He didn't want to marry her, but he didn't know how to tell her that. The hunter look wasn't exactly a costume. She often had a gun with her, and he felt trapped. He was able to make his getaway when she fell in love with a man who actually looked like a bear. He hadn't interfered with his facial hair in years, and she loved that.