The Mouse

There's a sense that spring is just about to explode into life. The daffodils are out. The Champions League is back. We've found someone to send to the Eurovision song contest. It's not really 'someone'. We're sending a turkey called Dustin this year. At last we've started giving the contest the respect it deserves. It's nowhere near as strange as Glen Hansard winning an Oscar. After years of not getting the success he deserves in the music business it's great to see him getting some recognition. For those of us who still associate him with No Disco (90s late night music show -- I associate everything with No Disco) it was bizarre to see him on the stage in front of all those Hollywood stars. He said beforehand that it was like being a plumber at a flower show (he always talks in metaphors and similes, which made for some great interviews on No Disco). It's nice to think that people will eventually get the success they deserve, though perhaps in an unexpected form. It would be like if Jimmy White, after losing six snooker World Championship finals, was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

My cousin Isobel was walking through the countryside one day when she met an old man who looked lost. She asked him if she could be of assistance. He looked at her, and he took a step back to get a better view, but he kept going on his backward step, gliding steadily away until he was too far away to see her at all. She could just about see him. She waved at him. So he took a step forward to get a closer view until he came too close to her and his face was almost touching hers. "I don't know," he said.

"Do you mind if I take a step backwards?" she said.

"I think it would be safer if you took the backward step rather than me. God knows where I'd take it to."

She took a step back and she said, "Are you lost?"

"I don't know. I could be. That would explain some things, but not everything. It wouldn't explain why I've got a sleeping mouse in my pocket."

"Explanations don't have to explain everything. They just have to explain some things."

"In that case, I'm lost alright."

"Where were you going to?"

"I don't know. I'd know it if I saw it."

"What does it look like?"

"It's a tree. I think it's in a forest, but I could be wrong."

"Right. I'm not sure I can be of any assistance there. Maybe I can help you with the sleeping mouse."

The man, whose name was Barney, took the mouse out of his pocket and he said, "I've tried waking him up but he only yawns or stretches his legs. I found him in my pocket three days ago and he's never woken up in all that time."

"Where were you when you found him?"

"I'd spent the night asleep under a tree and when I woke he was in my pocket."

"Someone must have put him there, or else he climbed into your pocket and found a comfortable bed."

"I've killed plenty of mice in my time, but I just can't kill a sleeping one. He looks so peaceful."

"I know someone who might be able to wake him up. She has a way with animals. Her name is Edel."

They went to see Edel. It was easy to find her house because of the dog who kept jumping up against the front door. He loved doing that. The dog knocked on the door for them and Edel opened it. "It's about a mouse, isn't it?" she said.

The man, whose name was Barney, took the mouse out of his pocket and he said, "How did you know?"

"He's talking to me in his sleep."

"Are you?" Barney said to the mouse.

"Yeah," Edel said. "He said, 'Yeah, I am.'"

The mouse told her to walk to the bottom of the hill. She did as the mouse asked. Isobel and Barney went with her. When they got to the bottom of the hill the mouse told them to take a right turn at a crossroads. Edel said, "He's very good at giving directions, for a mouse. They'd only have a limited view of the land. For a sleeping mouse he's very, very good. I know some people who'd be better off asleep when they give directions. I know some people who'd just be better off asleep."

The mouse led them to an old mansion that was hidden amongst the trees on the side of a hill. There was a cord next to the front door. Isobel pulled it and a bell rang. The mouse woke as soon as he heard the sound.

"I can't hear what he says now," Edel said.

They waited, but no one answered the door. The mouse jumped out of Barney's hand and went around the back of the house. There was a fountain in the back garden, but no water flowed from it. The mouse climbed onto the edge of it and looked down at the dried leaves. There was a statue of a woman in the centre of the fountain. The water was supposed to flow from a jug she was holding. Barney said he could hear the stone woman talking. She told him to go to the orchard at the end of the garden and look for a silver pin in a tree.

They went to the orchard. Red apples were beginning to fall from the trees. They found the silver pin. It was embedded in the trunk of one of the trees. "What do we do now?" Barney said.

"Maybe we need to take the pin out of the tree," Isobel said, "like King Arthur removing the sword from the stone."

Barney pulled the pin out of the tree. He looked around, and he listened carefully. "I thought something would happen," he said.

"Let's go back to the house," Isobel said.

As they approached the house they heard voices. There were people in the house and they were shouting. There was a woman standing next to the fountain. Her feet were wet. The stone woman was gone from the centre of the fountain, but the jug was there, and water was flowing from it. "We've been frozen for over a hundred years," she said.

A man fell through a window in the house. He was holding a sword. He got to his feet and dived back in through the window. "I see the fight has started again," the woman said. "They'll end up tearing the house to pieces. I stopped caring about twenty years ago."

Isobel, Barney and Edel went back to the orchard. Barney replaced the pin in the tree. They walked back towards the house. The woman they had met by the fountain was gone, and the stone woman had returned to the centre of the fountain. They went into the house through the broken window. Inside they saw statues of men holding swords. They explored the whole house, and in nearly every room they found more statues.

Isobel said, "If we take the pin out again they'll tear the house to pieces and they'd probably end up killing each other too. We need to stop the fight almost as soon as it starts again, and I know just the man for the job."

Gilbert was the man she asked to do the job. He had a wild red beard, and it looked as if his face was on fire. His fiery eyes would grab anyone's attention and he was a captivating speaker. His words would knock down the doors to people's brains and kick out all other occupants. He could talk for hours, but he kept wandering from the point. He once spoke at a meeting that was organised to protest against the closure of a playground. His speech was so rousing that he convinced everyone to march to the mayor's office and storm it, but he kept talking for another two hours. His speech ended with the line 'And that's why you should always listen to an apple before eating it'. Everyone forgot about going to the mayor's office. They all went home to listen to apples.

When Gilbert arrived at the old house, Barney pulled the pin out of the tree and the fight began again, but it came to an end a few seconds after Gilbert started speaking. He stood in the back garden. Some of the men came out of the house, and others looked out through the windows. Gilbert started talking about peace and he ended up talking about Meatloaf. When he finished, there was silence for a few seconds and then the fight started again. They had been waiting for a hundred years, and a few hours wasn't going to put them off.

Barney put the pin back into the tree and the men in the house were frozen again. Isobel came up with another idea: have a party to counteract the fight. If the party was powerful enough, the fight would be submerged in it. She invited everyone she knew, and she got a band to play as well. Just in case the plan failed, they broke the stone swords on all of the statues in the house.

Isobel wanted the party to be in full flow before the statues came back to life, so they started the celebrations two hours before Barney removed the pin. By that stage a lot of the guests had forgotten the purpose of the party.

The men seemed confused when they came back to life. They looked at their broken swords and at all the strangers dancing and drinking around them. Drinks were put into their hands and they dropped the swords. They dived into the celebrations with all of the enthusiasm they had been saving for the fight.

If anything, the party was too powerful. By the end of the second day, half the band had been lost in action, lying unconscious on the ground somewhere. The other half fought bravely on. The noise they were making suggested a terrifying fight, but still people danced to it. They only stopped dancing when Gilbert sang. The party lasted a few days, and they ended up wrecking the place anyway, but at least no one was killed.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't seem to mind being stuck on a wall for the best part of a century. If he was re-united with his body I doubt if he'd feel a need to fight. Despite having weapons attached to his head, he'd be far too refined to engage in physical combat. I could imagine him getting involved in a duel to defend the honour of a lady, but I've never come across another moose who's refined enough to attack the honour of a lady. The wife's uncle says he got into a lot of trouble over the years because of his attempts to defend ladies, or catching fainting ladies, or just telling them they're more beautiful than truth. Many duels have ensued. Many dogs and bullets have been sent after him to chase him off the property.

The Lion

One of our neighbours has built a windmill in her back garden. She's big into self-sufficiency. She grows her own vegetables, gets milk from her own cow, and spiders make her clothes.

My cousin Charlie often visited a neighbour of his called Amanda. On one of his visits he was determined to ask her out to see a play about a drunk shepherd, but his courage failed him shortly after he arrived. He abandoned plans to ask her out, and he tried to think of something else to talk about. He didn't know what to say until the cat started acting strangely. When the cat fell over he provided the commentary. "The cat fell over," he said.

"How very, very odd," she said.

"Cats are odd. If they weren't odd they'd be invisible. You'd stop noticing them in the same way you stop noticing wallpaper."

"You'd notice wallpaper if it killed mice and cleaned itself."

"I'd file that behaviour under odd. Pigs have a much more sensible attitude to cleanliness."

"That's an odd attitude from a man who has the appearance of a domesticated creature."

"Maybe I'm an undomesticated beast under the surface."

Charlie considered this to be his best chat-up line ever, but it went over her head. She said, "I suppose we should look into the matter of the cat."

They looked into it by going outside. They looked around for anything out of the ordinary, but the bright sun of a July afternoon illuminated relentless ordinariness, which was just the way she liked it. The old coal shed looked as unthreatening as ever. The flowers were resting in their beds.

"Maybe we need to look further afield to find the source of the oddness," she said.

They went for a walk through the fields. It was a beautiful day to be out in the countryside at the foot of a mountain. Neither of them felt a need to say anything. They listened to the song of the birds and the sound of a distant tractor.

They met a man called Hermann, who was holding a shotgun. Charlie asked him if he was hunting and he said, "In a manner of speaking, I am. I don't enjoy hunting, but it's something I have to do. To understand why, you first need to understand that I enjoy lighting my cigarette lighter. I was doing this on a city street on Monday when a woman asked me if I'd like to buy a stuffed lion. I'd normally respond to offers like this with an icy glare, but the cigarette lighter had left me in a good mood, so I said I'd like to see it. She led me through the city streets. It was a hot day, and we walked on pavements lit up by the bright sun or covered by the shadows of buildings. The lion was in a glass case in the lobby of an apartment building that was being renovated. I ended up buying the lion. It was such an impressive beast I couldn't let him get away. On the following day he began his journey to my house on the side of the mountain. The glass case only barely fits into my hall. I have to squeeze past it. Fat people have to come in through the back door.

"He arrived on Tuesday and when I woke up on Wednesday morning I looked out the window and I saw a deer and a fox outside. They were staring at my front door. On the following morning there were even more animals there. I took the lion's case into the garden to scare them off. When I woke up this morning there were no animals outside my house, but the lion was gone too. There were huge paw prints outside the glass case. I've been searching for him all day."

Charlie and Amanda said they'd let him know if they saw the lion. When they got back to Amanda's house they saw the lion in her back garden. He was lying on the lawn. Charlie again provided the commentary when he pointed at the lion and said, "It's a lion."

"So I see."

"It must be Hermann's lion."

"Quite probably."

"If we hadn't heard Hermann's story, this would seem very out of the ordinary."

"Most definitely."

"We should probably let him know."

Amanda phoned Hermann and he came over with his shotgun.

"Are you going to shoot it?" Charlie said.

"No. Unless he attacks."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"You should get a vet," Amanda said.

"The vets around here wouldn't go anywhere near a lion."

"Edwin would. He retired years ago, but he still does a bit of work. He's nearly blind. We could convince him that the lion is really a donkey. We'll say that he refuses to move. The one thing I know about donkeys is that they're prone to refusing to move. We'll say that some kids messed with his hair and still he wouldn't move."

When Edwin arrived on the scene he said, "Right, I'll just take his temperature."

Amanda didn't think it was advisable for Edwin to put a thermometer into either end of the lion. She said, "He's not sick. I think it's more of a mental problem."

The lion roared. Edwin said, "That's the hoarsest donkey I've ever heard in my life."

"Again, I think it's just a mental thing. He thinks he's a lion."

"I'm out of my depth here. If it was an actual lion, I could help ye out. But I've never come across a donkey who thinks he's a lion. And what the kids have done to his hair would only confuse him even more."

"Maybe if we just play along with him and treat him as a lion."

"It's worth a try." Edwin took a whistle from his bag. "I got this when I worked in Africa. It makes a low-pitched sound that lions find appealing. Where do you want to move him to?"

"To Hermann's place," Amanda said. "He's Hermann's donkey."

Hermann said, "I can safely say he's not my donkey."

"Oh yeah, he's Hermann's lion." She winked.

When Edwin blew into the whistle the lion stood up and walked towards him. Edwin walked away. He blew the whistle every so often and the lion kept following him.

When they got to Hermann's house, the woman who sold the lion was waiting there. When she saw the lion she said, "I thought this might happen."

"What made you think that?" Hermann said.

I was afraid the journey would wake him. He slept soundly for over a hundred years, but he had rarely been disturbed during that time. The potholes on these roads would wake a statue."

"How do we put him to sleep again?"

"Just wait. He'll get tired eventually."

The vet said, "I have some sleeping tablets I could give him."

"Which end would you be putting them into?" Amanda said.

"His mouth."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

"What about hypnosis?" Charlie said. "My uncle once slept for a week after been hypnotised. We had to get a bagpiper to wake him up."

They went to see a hypnotist called Paul the Enthraller, but he refused to go anywhere near the lion. They went to see another hypnotist called Steve Sleepdoctor, and he also refused to hypnotise the lion but he was more than willing to hypnotise Paul the Enthraller into thinking that the lion was a donkey. He hated Paul.

So Steve hypnotised Paul into thinking that the lion was a donkey and then Paul hypnotised the lion into a deep sleep. They lifted the sleeping lion back into the glass case, and they put the case into the hall of Hermann's house.

When Charlie and Amanda went back to Amanda's house, the cat was sitting in the place on the lawn where the lion had been. He held his head high, and he had a regal bearing, but the effect was ruined when he fell over again. "He fell over again," Charlie said.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't sleep very much. Sometimes he struggles to keep his eyes open when the fire is lighting and the TV is on. The wall is more interesting than most TV. The wife's uncle says that a friend of his watches paint dry. After a few hours of staring at it he starts to see Vikings on unicycles and Dracula being washed by The Rose of Tralee. He's never seen anything as exciting as this on TV.

Sean's Place

The days are getting longer. It's nice to look out the window in the evening and not see night. A mouse is proving to be a spanner in the works of nights these days. I've been trying to catch the mouse for weeks. The wife's aunt gave us a loan of her cat, but when I woke up in the morning the cat was walking along the piano keys. He was trying to play something, but the song sounded wrong. He had a lump on his head, and little birds were flying around the lump. I think the mouse has been watching cartoons during the night.

My cousin Hector used to spend a lot of time with his friends, Steve and Sean, before he got married. After leaving the pub they often went back to Sean's place to drink some more. Sean lived in a house that was like an inverse hole. Instead of decorating and cleaning the place he just drank to blur his surroundings. As long as there was a fire lighting it felt like home. And it was a nice home when there were a few friends to fill the rooms with laughter and song until unconsciousness came along and the floor became a bed. Sometimes there were women, but not often enough for the liking of Sean and his friends.

Sean inherited a modest fortune from an uncle. There were more women in the house after this. There were more men who claimed to be friends as well, but he knew who his real friends were. He didn't forget them. He never forgot waiting for a bus on a freezing morning with them, or retrieving an old TV from a skip, or swapping socks on a dare or a bet or just to have something to do. All of the women were true friends, even the one who was really a man, but he didn't trust the other men. When they told him he was their best friend he let them know what he thought of them. They were free to come along and drink and dance with the woman who had a spare set of clothes in her purse, but if they ever asked for a loan they'd be asked to leave by the woman with the deep voice.

His real friends were perfectly entitled to ask for a loan and he never refused them. Hector wanted to get dance lessons, but he was too embarrassed to ask Sean for the money. He told one of the women about it and she told him that if he got lessons they'd beat the idiosyncrasies out of him with a shepherd's staff. He'd been chased by people wielding various forms of staffs and sticks often enough, and by security staff wielding truncheons, so he decided against the lessons. She convinced him that he didn't need to be tutored to enjoy dancing. He agreed with that because he thought tutoring was something a vet did. He loved dancing. He had his own style. His interpretation of the music would make you wonder what was going on in his mind or what was going on in his trousers. The women all seemed to wonder about the latter, and this had a powerful seductive effect on them.

Steve asked for a loan to buy a second-hand potter's wheel and a kiln from a one-armed man whose father used to use them. The one-armed man couldn't use them because of his arm.

One of the women was over six foot tall. She was beautiful and clever, and they wondered why she'd be going to a hole like Sean's place. The money wouldn't be enough to draw her there. She'd find much more money in much better places. She said she liked Sean's house because it felt real and if that meant that other places felt unreal then yes, other places must be unreal. Other places were just a shiny facade and other people were happy to live in the illusion of the facade, but that wasn't really living at all. Those people were afraid of what lay beneath, but Sean and his friends weren't afraid at all. They celebrated what lay beneath, and they didn't worry about the facade. Hector danced in his own peculiar way and the woman with the big hair kept a cigarette lighter on her head.

Every morning the floor was covered with empty bottles, half-smoked cigars and half-empty people who just needed breakfast and a bit of fresh air to feel complete again. When they started to get bored with their surroundings, Sean bought a van and they'd go away on trips, often staying overnight in a caravan or under the stars or with a friend or relation whose house was always open to visitors, who'd never look at the clock and wonder when the visitors are going to leave.

One evening they went to see Peter, one of Sean's cousins. He was delighted to have visitors. Sean had a theory that if you accidentally hammered a nail into your hand in someone else's house and the nail was stuck in a wall, you could tell a lot about the owner of the house by the way they reacted. Some would call for an ambulance, some would get a mop, and some would get a drink. Sean considered his cousin to be in the latter group. He told Peter that he was in the get-that-man-a-drink group, and he meant it as a compliment. Peter took it in the right spirit and he raised a toast to Sean.

They could sense some tension between their host and a woman who stared at him, sometimes from about two inches away. They wondered if they should leave, or at least some of them did. Sean took his cousin to one side and said, "If you want us to leave, just say the word and we'll be gone."

"No no no. The word is 'no'. Don't leave. I'll never let the other word out. What sort of a host would I be if I let the other word out? I'd sooner let the hounds out, if I had actual hounds. Stinky doesn't qualify."

"Do I detect a bit of tension between you and the woman who poured the drink down your trousers?"

"I suppose there's no denying it. But she can go to hell. That's where she came from."

He hated the way he loved that woman, and at times he wondered if he really loved her at all. Maybe they hated each other, but that was better than nothing. He believed that love or hate was a good foundation for a long term relationship, but anything in between and the house would fall down. Her name was Olivia. At times her presence felt like needles sticking into his skin without any of the benefits of acupuncture. She started fires to express her feelings. She baked cakes and then shot them. He couldn't resist her feelings even though he was afraid they'd result in his untimely death, and maybe that was part of the appeal. But only part. There was more to it. If he considered their relationship rationally and weighed up all the pros and cons, he'd run away as fast as he could. But he'd met other women who had far more pros than cons and they made him run away. She was all wrong, but the others were relentlessly right.

Hector suggested to Sean that he could appease this woman by asking if she had any ideas on how to spend the money. So he told her about his recent windfall and how he was always open to good ideas on how to spend it. He was more than willing to give no-interest loans to encourage entrepreneurial endeavours.

Her face lit up when he mentioned the loans. She told him that she had always wanted to open her own garden centre. It was a dream of hers. Ever since she was young she had an interest in flowers. She already had the land for the garden centre, but she needed some investment to get the business up and running. Sean told her he'd pay whatever she needed.

A smile dominated her face and she immediately entered the category of people who'd get you a drink if you nailed your hand to a wall. Peter thought she'd be back to her old self as soon as Sean went home, but the smile was still there a week later, and he was missing the old Olivia. He feared that she was gone for good. She could turn out to be more right than all of the others, and this was a terrifying thought for Peter.

But he didn't need to worry. Working with flowers would bring out the get-him-a-drink side of Olivia, but dealing with people would bring out the nail-his-hand-to-the-wall side. On the garden centre's opening day she got into an argument with one of her customers. A man complained about the poor quality of a pot and she said, "I bet your brain complains about the poor quality of its pot too."

She found that it was useful to have an enormous compost heap just so she could threaten to fill people's cars with the compost, but she only had to carry out the threats a few times. Every evening she spent hours complaining about the idiots she had to deal with. She enjoyed this as much as Peter did.

The moose's head over the fireplace keeps a close eye on the cuckoo that emerges from the cuckoo clock. One day it was wearing a top hat. This is one of the clocks from my grandfather's collection. He often got people to stand in front of his favourite clock and wait for the cuckoo to come out. A boxing glove would emerge and punch them in the face. Little birds would fly around their heads. I'm trying to find a way to get the mouse to stand in front of it on the stroke of midnight.

A Snail Wearing a Beret

Indians have set up camp in one of the fields behind the house. They're not really Indians. They're natives of Waterford rather than of America. They say they have a right to practise traditional ways, like scalping, but it's really just an excuse to steal wigs and sell them on Ebay.

My cousin Jane was looking through her diary on an evening in July, and on the page for the following day she saw a bad drawing of a snail wearing a beret. She could vaguely remember drawing it after a party a few days earlier. She got the feeling that it was supposed to remind her of something, but she had no idea what that could be.

After breakfast on the following morning she tried to remember the party. She was able to recall something about a man wearing paper clothes, and a bowler hat in the middle of the floor, but most of the rest of the night was a blur. She couldn't see how these things related to the snail, apart from the tenuous link between the bowler hat and the beret.

She met her friend, Claudia, later that day and she told the story of the snail in the beret. "All I can remember is a man wearing paper clothes, and a bowler hat on the ground," Jane said.

"Maybe the snail was under the bowler hat."

"Then why did I draw him wearing a beret?"

"That man wasn't wearing paper clothes. He'd just written and painted lots of things on his clothes. He's an artist. He has an exhibition in the gallery at the moment. Maybe we'd find out more about the snail there."

They went to the gallery, and the artist was there in person. His name was Melvin. He had a palette and a brush, and he was altering some of his paintings. Jane asked him if he often altered paintings in galleries and he said, "All the time. Nothing is ever truly finished. Everything is a work in progress. I see life as a never-ending film. You can change the film as it happens. You can change things so they'll fit with the template, sometimes by squinting and imagining things that aren't there, sometimes by physically altering the world.

"What do you mean by a template?"

"I try to perceive the world according to an inner template I've formed. It's not possible to define that template in terms of an over-riding concept or the methodology I've used to form it. There's no single concept or methodology. For instance, I believe that turtles are made out of Lego. This doesn't have anything to do with anything else I believe."

"Have you ever tried to take a turtle apart and make it into something else?" Claudia said.

"No. I just stand back and squint when I see them."

"What are snails made of?"

"Snails are just toes that escape. They hide for a few years, and during that time the toe nail will turn into a shell."

"So you could say they're toes in disguise," Jane said.

"You could say that."

"A snail wearing a beret would suggest a disguise."

"Or a snail trying to hide."

"Do you know of something that's supposed to happen today that relates to a snail wearing a beret?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Well, there is a reason but I'm not entirely sure what it is. It has something to do with a snail wearing a beret."

"The only thing I can think of that relates to snails wearing clothes is this: I come from a small village, and a few years ago the government wanted to close down the school because there weren't enough pupils. They organised a protest, and I agreed to help them. I wanted to make more kids to symbolise the fact that there will inevitably be more kids in the future. So I made things out of slugs and snails and puppy dog's tails, and out of sugar and spice and all things nice, or some things nice. I dressed them in school uniforms."

"Did the protest work?"

"Yeah. I think they were scared."

"Do you remember telling me about this at the party?"

"I can't remember that. I might have."

"Maybe that's what put the snail in the beret into my mind."

Jane and Claudia left the gallery. "The snail in the beret could represent a French boy," Claudia said.

"Or part of a French boy. He's missing his slugs and tails. Maybe he ate them."

"I can vaguely remember Jill saying something about a French boy throwing a cabbage at her."

"Why would a French boy throw a cabbage at Jill?"

"Why wouldn't a French boy throw a cabbage at Jill? If there was a French boy with a cabbage within ten yards of Jill and he wasn't throwing it at her you'd think, 'Why isn't he throwing the cabbage at Jill? What's wrong with him?' And it's not just French boys. Nelson Mandela would struggle to resist throwing a cabbage at her."

They went to see Jill, and she told them that the French boy was her nephew. His name was Frederic. Her sister lives in France, but she was over here on holiday with her family.

Jane said, "Do you know of anything that's supposed to happen today?"

"No. Is he planning something for today?"

"No. I don't know. I've never even met him."

"He's planning something, isn't he?"

"How would I know if I've never met him before?"

"He's planning something alright. He's at a soccer camp today. Yesterday he put ear drops into my tea, and he stirred it with the thing used to apply the ear drops. He only told me this after I drank the tea."

Jane and Claudia tried not to laugh. They said they'd let her know if they heard about his plans.

When they were walking back through the town they met Melvin again. He was painting a mural on a wall. The mural showed a housewife being confronted by a snail wearing a beret. "The idea that something is going to happen that relates to snails in berets had a big effect on my template," he said. "I pictured an invading army of snails. These murals are intended to warn people of the danger. I've done another one of a snail rounding up hippies."

"I really like this one," Jane said. "It's unlikely that I drew the snail in my diary to remember an invasion, but still, I like it."

Rory arrived on the scene. Jane had been talking to him at the party. He said to her, "I might have known you'd be behind these murals."

"What do you mean?"

Rory rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a snail in a beret. "You talked me into getting this," he said to Jane. "You convinced me it would look great, and I was drunk enough to believe it."

"It's all coming back to me now," Jane said. "But why would I draw the snail in my diary for today?"

"Because we were supposed to go to see a film today."

"Oh yeah. That was it."

Melvin said, "I'm sticking with my idea of the invasion."

"I'm stuck with this bloody tattoo," Rory said.

"I know a tattoo artist who could help you out," Melvin said. "He could turn that into a puma attacking a caveman. I'll show you what it would look like."

Melvin painted a small mural of a puma attacking a caveman. Rory liked it, so Melvin took them to meet Flanagan, the tattoo artist. He had only just woken up, and he was trying to get over a hangover. After a few cups of coffee he was able to look at Rory's arm and not see a blurred image of one of the aliens who appear in his dreams. They took him to see the mural of the puma attacking the cavemen. Flanagan took a photo of it. "Can I have it without the caveman?" Rory said. "I'd rather have the puma on its own."

"I think I can manage that."

Rory and Flanagan went away to work on the tattoo. Jane, Claudia and Melvin went to see the mural of the snail rounding up the hippies. On the way they met Jill. She was running towards them, and then she ran past them. They ran after her. She told them that she was running away from the police because they thought she had painted the mural of the snail. She had seen the mural and she thought it would be a perfect way to get back at Frederic. She painted his name on the wall to suggest that he was the snail in the beret, but the police caught her in the act and she ran away.

Melvin painted an arrow on a wall that pointed to the left, and he went to the right with Jane, Claudia and Jill. The police followed the arrow.

"This has certainly been an interesting film," Claudia said. "There's a romantic subplot between Jane and Rory, an invasion, a police chase and a French villain. So how are you going to end it?"

"There is no end," Melvin said. "This could go on forever."

They heard an ominous noise. "I really wish this would end right now," Jill said.

Frederic appeared at the other end of the street. He was joined by ten other boys from his soccer camp, and they were all holding water balloons. When Frederic saw Jill he said, "There she is," and the boys started running towards her. Jane, Claudia, Melvin and Jill ran away.

Jane said to Melvin, "Have you been making more kids?"

"Not personally, no. But this all fits the template."

"Couldn't you make something with sugar and spice and all things nice to counteract them?"

"It's a bit late for that."

Melvin used the arrow trick to lose the boys, and it worked again, but he knew they'd keep looking for their prey.

Jane, Claudia, Melvin and Jill went back to the street where Melvin had painted the mural of the puma attacking the cavemen. Twenty girl guides were staring at the mural. They were all holding ice creams. They wouldn't have been made with many nice things. There would have been shards of glass in the sugar.

"An army of girls," Melvin said. "I only need to make a minor adjustment to the template to fit this in."

"They're girl guides," Jane said.

"Then why the military uniforms?"

"That's what girl guides wear."

Jill explained the situation to the girls, and they were only too happy to take on the boys. The boys were terrified of the girls wielding ice creams. Frederic and his army retreated. Jill was worried that Frederic would try something else, so Jane got a paintbrush and painted 'The End' on a wall. This put Jill's mind at rest.

Rory was happy with his puma tattoo. Jane went to see a film with him, but it was an anti-climax after the real life film they'd just seen.

The moose's head over the fireplace is an expert on antiques. We hold objects in front of him so he can examine them, and you can tell by the look on his face whether or not he thinks it's valuable. His eyes lit up when he saw the vase that my great-grandfather bought from a man who believed that a vampire was always standing right behind him. He sold the vase for next to nothing because he thought it would annoy the vampire.