'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Cowboy


The clocks go forward at the weekend, so we'll have an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings. There's an old sailor in the pub who often tells a story about a land where they'd get twenty-four hours of sunlight followed by twenty-four hours of darkness. He says he once found himself stranded on a desert island. He spent years trying to attract the attention of passing ships and planes, but he started to enjoy life in the pub, telling the natives tales of his seafaring days, so he decided to stay and he's been here ever since.


My cousin Charlotte once bought an album by a country band called 'Tall Joe and the Small Hurricanes' for her father's birthday. She bought it in a shop that specialised in country music. The owner of the shop, Fred, used to wear a Stetson and he always had country music on the stereo. He didn't have the album in stock, but he said he'd order it for her. She went to the shop to collect it after work one evening. He gave her the album and as he closed the shop he told her about his experiences as a roadie for Tall Joe and the Small Hurricanes. He was in the middle of a story about a dead cow when they were standing on the street outside the shop. A woman came along and said to him, "I thought you were supposed to be playing football this evening."


"I am," he said through gritted teeth.


"I knew there was something going on. And it can go on for as long as you want, because whatever was going on between us in the past is over now."


She walked away.


"That was Ruth," Fred said to Charlotte. "She's my girlfriend. Was my girlfriend."


"Shouldn't you explain to her that I was buying an album and you were just telling me about the comatose drummer and the dead cow?"


"I'm sick of explaining things to her. She always thinks I'm up to something. There's no way I'm going to her this time. When she comes to her senses, she can come to me."


"What if she doesn't come to her senses?"


"Then I'm better off without her."


Charlotte felt bad about her role in the split, and she wanted to get them back together. The obvious thing to do would be to tell Ruth what really happened. Fred had mentioned that she was a country singer. When she was playing in a pub one evening, Charlotte went to see her. She told her about the album she went to buy and how Fred had only been telling her anecdotes about his time with the band, but Ruth refused to go to him. "If he wants me back, he'll have to come to me," she said.


Charlotte didn't know what to do, so she asked her friend Andy for help. He liked to think that he could come up with a solution for any problem. He'd never go for the obvious solution, so you should only go to him if you've already tried the obvious course of action. He said he was just continuing a family tradition of solving problems with unusual solutions. He'd developed many stories about this family tradition. There was always a kernel of truth surrounded by layers of development. He used to tell a story about how his grandfather, who was a scientist, once blew up a film studio. When his grandfather worked in his 'lab' he used to wear a badge that said 'I'm an alchemist now, Ma', but if you asked him he'd always deny being engaged in alchemy. He said he wore the badge because he liked it. He got it from a milkman who was more interested in cultivating his facial hair than wearing badges. Andy's grandfather made a badge that said 'I'm more interested in cultivating facial hair than getting women pregnant'. He gave this to the milkman in exchange for the alchemy badge. Andy often wore this badge, and he wore a few others as well. One of them said 'Wear badges, not badgers'.


Andy didn't take long to come up with an unusual solution to Charlotte's problem. He said, "We just need to bring either one of them to see the other, and I think it would be easier to bring him to her. If she's playing in a pub, then we need to lure him to the pub, and make it look like he's there to hold out the olive branch. The best way to lure a man anywhere is to use a woman. In this case it would be a woman dressed up as a cowgirl."


"The problem is that Andy refuses to go anywhere near Ruth, and your solution is to use Ruth to lure him to a pub?"


"No, not Ruth. Another woman in a cowgirl outfit. Andrea would be perfect. She could lure any man anywhere. Alcohol will be needed to convince her to take part in this scheme. She'd rather dress as a Nazi than as a cowgirl when she's sober, but she'd do anything when you get her drunk. She has a very refined taste in classical music. She believes that all other forms of music could debase a mind that isn't structurally sound. Even within the classical canon she considers many works to be 'made by degenerates for degenerates', as she says herself. But when she's drunk she sometimes sings songs by The Monkees."


"This is mad. Your plan to re-unite him with his girlfriend involves him being seduced by another woman."


"This isn't mad at all. This is perfectly sensible, when you think about it. We need to lure him to the pub. Let's say we tell him that they're giving out free drink. So he goes there and she says, 'I knew you'd come running back to me', but he says, 'I only came here for the free drink.' But if we get Andrea to lure him there, and then get Andrea out of the way, Ruth will see him and say, 'I knew you'd come running back,' and then he's faced with a choice of telling her that he came here with another woman or that he came here to support her during her gig. This will bring him to his senses quicker than a well-placed kick. He'll tell her he's there to support her. And he won't be able to resist her when he sees her on stage with a guitar, wearing her cowgirl outfit."


"I still don't know about this. If it goes wrong we'll only make things worse. And is it really right to get Andrea drunk just so we can use her to lure Fred?"


"She'll like it. She'd only get drunk anyway and do something just as stupid. We're only channelling her stupidity to our own ends. Unchannelled stupidity rarely ends with something good."


It didn't take long to get Andrea drunk, and she agreed to wear the outfit and take Fred to the pub. She went to see him in his shop as he was closing up. She told him she was interested in Tall Joe and the Small Hurricanes, and he started telling his anecdotes. He found it impossible to resist her. Not only was she wearing a cowgirl outfit, he'd also be spared the expense of getting her drunk. When she suggested going to a pub he couldn't help smiling at his good fortune.


They went to the pub where Ruth was playing. Andrea was supposed to say she had to go to the ladies just before Ruth came on the stage, but she did something stupid instead. When Ruth came on stage, Fred and Andrea were kissing.


Ruth didn't notice them for a few minutes. They were at a table at the back of the pub. She recognised the hat first, and then she saw the face beneath the hat, and what that face was attached to. When he heard Ruth singing he tried to cover his face with his hat, and with Andrea, but Ruth had obviously recognised him. She was struggling to go on.


Charlotte was with Andy at the bar. She said, "Oh well, we gave it our best shot."


"Sorry about this. I think I've only made things worse."


"There's no need to apologise. I'm really grateful for all you've done. Let me buy you a drink."


She bought him a drink, and then another. After a few more drinks he was drunk. When Ruth finished her set, Charlotte took Andy over to the table where Fred and Andrea were sitting. Fred was feeling guilty about what happened. Andrea was starting to feel sober, which brought a wave of guilt and regret. Charlotte said, "All is not lost. She wouldn't have had a clear view of Fred's face. We need to act quickly. Andy, will you swap clothes with Fred?"


Andy was drunk enough to agree. They went to the toilets to exchange clothes. Andy came back dressed as a cowboy. He sat at the table with Andrea, and they started kissing.


When Ruth emerged from the dressing room she went straight to that table. There were tears in her eyes when she said, "If you think..."


Andy looked up. When she saw his face she said, "Oh... I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else."


Fred was standing behind her. He coughed to attract her attention, and she turned around. He said, "I just came her to, ah... y' know... support you."


"I knew you'd come back," she said as she put her arms around his neck.


The moose's head over the fireplace likes wearing his Stetson. He likes wearing all of his hats, and he doesn't mind the tinsel in his antlers at Christmas. The only thing he objects to is having flowers in his antlers. The wife's aunt went to flower-arranging classes and she was always looking for interesting places to put the flowers, so she put some in his antlers. She spent an hour arranging them, and she never noticed the look on his face. He clearly wasn't happy. Her teacher used to arrange flowers on TV aerials.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Clay Pigeon Hunters


Winter is making a slight return. Last week we had rain and gale force winds. The weather is much better in real life than in the forecasts on TV, so I avoid the TV forecasts. It's like hearing the results of a football match before you've had a chance to see the highlights. In gale force winds the weather is a better spectator sport than most football matches. The weather is yet to be ruined by bad refereeing decisions. My great-grandfather used to commentate on the weather. People would travel for miles just to hear his commentary, but part of the appeal lay in the political undertones. He once got arrested for his commentary on a storm.


My cousin Hugh and his fiancee, Annabel, once went for a walk along the banks of a river. They met a woman in a wedding dress. Her name was Kathy. She was looking for her groom, who went missing just before the wedding. A weather forecaster told her he'd be heading south, and that's what brought her here. They said they'd help her look. Annabel didn't believe in astrology, homeopathy or weather forecasting, but she did believe in peas.


A man and a woman crouched behind a ditch. They held paintball guns. Every so often they'd look at a shed in a field. The woman, whose name was Lisa, said, "Even if robots did take over the world, they'd be completely ill-equipped for governance. It would only be a matter of time before they self-destruct."


The man's name was Keith. He said, "They'd need a leader, but if robots reach the point where they decide to seize power, then individual robots will try to overthrow the leader. Tyrants will be created. Opposition will be crushed. Revolutions will take hold."


"It would be exciting to watch it from a distance. Because they're robots you wouldn't feel bad when one of them orders the execution of another. It would be like watching cars fighting each other."


"That sounds like the greatest demolition derby ever."


"Yeah. It's a cross between chess and a demolition derby."


"Or a cross between Macbeth and one of those TV shows where robots fight each other."


The shed door opened and a man looked out. They saw him, and they didn't move. They let him run a few yards away from the shed before they opened fire with the paint guns. He turned around and ran back into the shed.


"Wouldn't it be funny if the robot revolution started on one of those shows?" she said.


The people in the shed had been shooting clay pigeons. Lisa and Keith were part of a protest group who were against the tradition of shooting clay pigeons every Easter. It was a tradition that was started over fifty years earlier by a man called Hogan, who used to hunt in the bogland around the lake. He loved shooting but he hated killing birds. He liked to think of bullets as benevolent bees that could be used for all sorts of purposes, such as removing cans from a fence to save you the trouble of manually removing them. Instead of shooting birds, he'd look closely at the smoke that rose from his pipe, and he'd imagine the smoke turning into birds. He'd shoot at the smoke. He started lighting bonfires to get more smoke, and more realistic birds. He burnt lots of things, hoping to get the right sort of smoke. The fumes affected his head, and the birds he saw seemed more real.


The people who lived nearby were sick of the smoke, and they convinced him to shoot clay pigeons instead. A local man made a mobile clay pigeon launcher. This was a weapon in itself. He saw the clay pigeons as belligerent hawks that could be used for all sorts of purposes, such as making people run in terror from the shed where they were playing poker and joking about a woman who fainted when she saw a man with blood on his arms.


Hogan claimed that he often found chocolate eggs in the clay pigeons he shot. This probably had something to do with the fumes from the fires, but there were plenty of people who'd use any excuse to get drunk and shoot into the air, and the clay pigeon shooting became a popular pastime at Easter.


A group of men on a stag party had been drinking in a pub until dawn. They left the pub to walk back to the house they had rented, but they took a wrong turning, and they ended up in the bogland around the lake, where they met the clay pigeon shooters. The members of the stag party didn't need much of an excuse to get drunk, or drunker, and shoot in the air, so they joined in. About an hour later, the anti-hunt protestors arrived with paint guns. They rounded up the hunters and took them to the shed. The protestors took turns to guard the shed.


The peas proved to be more accurate than the weather forecaster. Hugh, Annabel and Kathy walked to the vast open land with open sky above, where the lines of jets intersected with the lines of overhead wires. They came to a house with a huge window in the front. The woman who owned it put papers over the window pane at night. Local teenagers used to draw a newspaper on the window. This was their form of graffiti. They wrote stories about local events, and they drew very detailed pictures to go with the text.


One of the stories was about the clay pigeon hunters and the protest. They had drawn a picture of Keith kissing Lisa. The caption simply said 'Keith kissing Lisa'. Kathy was shocked when she saw it. "That's my Keith," she said, "the man I'm supposed to marry. The man I was supposed to marry."


"You can't believe everything you see in the papers," Hugh said.


They read the text and they found out where the shed was. They walked in that direction, and they met Keith on the way. He was shocked to see Kathy. She was furious when she saw him. "Why were you kissing that woman?" she said.


"What woman?"


"Lisa. And who is that woman?"


"I never kissed her."


"We just saw it in the paper."


"She blew bubbles at me, and there were kisses in the bubbles, but that's as far as it went. There was certainly nothing on my part that amounted to a kiss."


"Then how do you explain the picture we saw?"


They went back to the house to show him the picture. A group of local artists used to edit the paper every evening. They had tiny scissors, and they'd re-arrange the text. They'd glue their pictures over the ones drawn by the teenagers. The teenagers were always sensationalising stories, but the artists tried to make them sound less dramatic. By the time Hugh, Annabel, Kathy and Keith got back to the house, the artists had altered the newspaper, and the picture with the clay pigeon story showed Lisa and Keith standing ten yards apart, waving at each other.


"You still have a lot of explaining to do," Kathy said. "Why did you miss the wedding?"


"We must have lost a day somewhere in the stag party. I only realised that today. The rest of the party are stuck in a shed. We were shooting clay pigeons, and we didn't realise that some people around here objected to this activity. I had refused to partake in the activity at all because... I had a feeling that some people might object to it. And I was right. The protestors arrived with paintball guns and they took all the hunters to a shed. I had to decide which side I was on. I couldn't just sit on the fence. So I ended up with the protestors. But I've been trying to get them out of the shed ever since. And now I have a plan."


The truth was that Keith had only joined the protestors after being confronted by Lisa. It took six hours before he started to feel guilty about succumbing to her charms and abandoning his friends, and only then did he start to think about getting his friends out of the shed.


"What's the plan?" Hugh said.


"I've just been to see the president of the local gun club to ask for his help. He didn't have any ideas, but he insisted that I took a loaded handgun with me. He said it would get me out of any trouble. I didn't think there could possibly be any use for a handgun, but now that I've met you guys, there's a simple plan. There are two men on guard at the shed. I'll go there now. One of ye will fire shots at the lake. They'll hear the shots, and I'll suggest that someone is shooting ducks. I'll offer to keep guard at the shed while they go to investigate, and then I'll let the prisoners out."


Hugh was given the task of firing the shots at the lake, but he was very reluctant to use the handgun. He was hoping to win a seat in a local election and he was afraid that a photo of him with the handgun would end up in the press. It's just the sort of thing that happened to people who ran in local elections. Annabel convinced him to do it.


As it turned out, the only newspaper to get a picture of Hugh firing a handgun was the one on the window. The teenagers showed him shooting a horse, but this picture was replaced a few hours later by the artists. They showed him holding an ice cream cone.


The prisoners were successfully freed from the shed. Hugh, Annabel and Kathy met them at a pub later that night. The prisoners' clothes were tattered and torn, and they were covered in paint. They were exhausted. The best man said, "This has been the best stag party ever."


Kathy tried to punch him, but they were able to hold her back, which disappointed both Kathy and the best man. Being punched by a woman in a wedding dress would have been the cherry on the icing of the cake of this stag party.


The moose's head over the fireplace correctly predicted that Denman would win the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. He refuses to make any predictions about the weather. Apparently people used to place bets on the outcome of the weather when my great-grandfather commentated on it. The winner was never as clear-cut as in a horse race, and many disputes arose. A referee would have helped, although a current English football referee would only have made things worse.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Restaurant


I cut the grass for the first time this year. One of our neighbours often used his lawnmower over the winter, but he used it on the carpet in his living room. He doesn't know why it keeps growing, and he doesn't want to know what's living in it. He puts elastic bands around the legs of his trousers to stop things from running up his legs. His brother wears bell-bottoms because he likes the idea of something running up his legs, but he's still waiting for something to do this. He hasn't had any more luck with the women in the pub. It might be the bell-bottoms that put them off, or else it's what he asks them to do inside his trousers.


My cousin Charlie and his girlfriend, Grainne, once spent a week painting an apartment. Grainne had an interest in interior design, and her brother asked her to decorate his new apartment. It took her weeks to decide what colours to use. During this time she visited the apartment at different times of the day and the night, she played different types of music in the rooms, she stood completely still in the kitchen for an hour, she spent many hours meditating and she threw darts at a colour chart. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a building, and there was another apartment building at the other side of the street. In the apartment directly opposite them, Charlie and Grainne often saw a woman in a uniform. It looked like a military uniform, but they had never seen a member of the Irish army wear anything like that.


Grainne wanted to find out more about the woman in the uniform because the uncertainty was distracting her from the colours. Charlie decided to ask his cousin Craig to solve the case. Craig considered himself to be a weekend detective. When he wasn't out with his metal detector he was trying to solve crimes, or if not crimes then mysteries. These mysteries were often just slightly-out-of-the-ordinary behaviour. So Charlie called him and asked him to investigate the mystery of the woman in the uniform.


Craig came around to the apartment and he looked through the blinds at the woman in the other apartment. He kept looking at her for twenty minutes. Charlie and Grainne thought that this was part of his investigative technique, but when he finally broke the silence he said, "Her gaze could make me fall and break my heart ten times before I hit the ground."


"You've been reading too many books," Grainne said. "Or you've been doing too much of something anyway. Only people who do too much of something say things like that. And they say things like that because they've been doing too little of other things, which results from doing too much of one thing. You've been doing too little of other things."


"I'd like to do a lot of other things with her. Or an awful lot of one thing."


"That would be healthier than whatever it is you're doing now. But she's not the sort of woman who'd fall for someone like you."


"Why not?"


"Because you'd fall off a ten-storey building for someone like her. The type of person you want the most is almost always the type of person who wants you the least. You've got to simply want someone. Just plain and simple want. If you desperately want them, you're in trouble. This only applies until you get to know them. When you know them well you can desperately want them. But if you desperately want someone you've only seen from another building, you've really got to start doing more of other things and less of one thing."


"I desperately want to get to know her. That's one of the other things I'll be doing. In fact, it's the only thing I'll be doing. This is the new one thing. I'll be devoting everything about me into getting to know her."


"And she'll have to get to know you too. She won't like what she sees if everything about you is a need to know her. Ye wouldn't have much to talk about. This is why you shouldn't desperately want someone. They'll want you less. They'll think you're odd."


"She might love talking about herself. We'll never run out of things to talk about then."


Craig came back on the following morning to look at the woman again. This time she was pacing nervously from one end of the room to the other. After twenty minutes of pacing she left the apartment. Craig, Charlie and Grainne ran down the stairs, and they met the woman on the street below. Craig asked her if she was in the army. He said he was thinking of joining the army himself.


She told them her name was Imogen and she was the manager of a restaurant with a military theme. The owner of the restaurant used to run another restaurant with his brother. In this one, all of the waiters and waitresses wore school uniforms. The chef wore a mortar board. But the two brothers had an argument and one of them left to start the military restaurant. It was meant to suggest a war with his brother. The chef from the school restaurant moved to the new one. His name was Giles. He was a brilliant chef, but he had always been on the verge of exploding with rage, and he was worse than ever in the military uniform. Someone who had worked with him before told them that he could be calmed if you kept throwing tennis balls at his head for about ten minutes. No one had the nerve to try this, but Giles became so terrifying that they had to try something.


Ethan, one of the waiters, agreed to throw the tennis balls at Giles. They got a bag full of balls, and they practised on a dummy first. When Ethan threw the first one at the chef's head, Giles was stunned. Ethan kept throwing them, and Giles didn't move. The other waiters, waitresses and the kitchen staff were picking up the balls and putting them back into the bag. They could see a look of calm beginning to bloom on Giles's face, and it looked as if the plan was going to work, but there was a golf ball in the bag. Ethan threw it, and Giles was filled with rage when it hit his head. He picked up a meat cleaver. Ethan ran away, Giles followed him and the rest of the staff followed Giles.


This had happened on the previous night. Imogen had no idea where they had got to. Craig, Charlie and Grainne said they'd help in the search for the staff. Craig asked Imogen what sort of man Ethan was. "He can be a bit odd at times," she said. "'Odd' as in awkward. He has an interest in history. He can be very odd when he's disputing some point about history."


"If he has an interest in history he'd be very familiar with the museum. I'd go to the museum if I wanted to hide. There are plenty of hiding places there."


So they went to the museum and they looked for Ethan, Giles and the other staff. Craig pointed out all of the hiding places he'd used himself in the past. He once spent a weekend hiding in the museum when one of his flatmates broke up with his girlfriend and started playing Michael Bolton albums.


Imogen got a phone call from one of the waitresses, who said she was hiding behind a bush in the park. Ethan was in a tree and Giles was waiting for him to come down.


Imogen, Craig, Charlie and Grainne went to the park. Ethan was still in the tree, and he was infuriating Giles even further by making fun of his knowledge of history.


"We'll have to use the tennis balls again," Craig said.


"What if we hit him in the wrong place?" Imogen said.


"It's a risk we'll have to take."


They went to a sports shop and they bought fifty tennis balls. They went back to the park and Craig started throwing the balls at the chef's head. This stunned Giles and he remained completely still. Ethan came down from the tree and he picked up a stick. He was just about to throw it at Giles, but the other kitchen staff jumped on him and held him down.


"You know nothing about the battle of Stalingrad," Ethan said. "Nothing."


After ten minutes of being hit by tennis balls, a look of calm dominated Giles's face. Craig stopped throwing the balls.


"What a beautiful day," Giles said. "Wow! Look at that leaf. And that one! Look, there's another one!"


They all went back to the restaurant. Imogen gave a free meal to Craig, Charlie and Grainne. Craig had a chance to have a private chat with Imogen.


After their meal they went back to the apartment, and Grainne asked Craig if he was still in love with Imogen.


"No," he said. "Now that I've met her and spoken to her, the mystery is gone. I don't need her at all now. I remembered what you said about not having a chance with her if I really needed her, and you were right about that. I asked her out and she said yes."


The moose's head over the fireplace has been busy reading the racing newspapers over the past few days. I've been busy holding the papers up in front of him. He has a great record at predicting winners at Cheltenham. The wife's uncle says that he once thought he'd make a fortune at the races after he developed a system to communicate with horses through a series of winks. But the horses weren't as good at predicting winners as he hoped they'd be. They all said things like, "I'll definitely win. Look at that eejit over there. How could he possibly win? And look at that eejit over there. He doesn't know what he's doing here." He also developed a language to communicate with professional footballers.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The Green Goo


We had some snow on Monday, but it didn't stay for long. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but when I was young we seemed to have much more snow. The summers were warmer too. I remember being in school just before the summer holidays one year, when it was so hot that our teacher melted. That's when I realised that he was made out of wax. I suppose I'd have noticed that sooner if I'd been paying attention in class.


My cousin Craig used to work in a laboratory with a friend of his called Owen. Owen fell in love with a model called Kirsten, but he knew she was out of his league. He struggled to make eye contact with her when they met. He used to spend a lot of time talking to Craig about her when they were supposed to be working in the lab.


A man called Phil set up a magazine with his brother and they both became millionaires within a year. They developed a rivalry with the owners of another magazine. They were always trying to out-do each other. If Phil and his brother bought Ferraris, the owners of the other magazine would buy Ferraris and conduct experiments to see how many naked women they could get into the cars. Phil wanted to go to the moon just to say 'up yours' to them, but he married a beautiful model instead, and he said 'up yours'. The priest didn't like that.


This beautiful model was Kirsten. Owen was heart-broken. He knew he never had a chance with her, but he liked to fantasise about marrying her and living by the sea with lots of dogs and kids. He spent a day drowning his sorrows in the lab. Craig joined him, and they forgot about the experiment they had been working on. They only remembered it when a test tube exploded and covered everything in what could best be described as a green goo. When Craig attempted to describe it scientifically he said, "It's a sort of a goo, isn't it?"


"Yeah," Owen said, "and it's green."


"We should probably write that down."


"And it smells too. We should go home to wash it off."


On their way home they couldn't help noticing all the attention they were getting from women. Given the fact that they were covered in a noxious green goo, it was no surprise that they'd attract the attention of women, but all the women they came across were obviously attracted by the smell. One woman wrote her phone number on Craig's arm. Another one invited them back to her place to determine how many naked people they could get into her Jacuzzi.


Craig wanted to conduct this experiment, but Owen was desperate to test the goo on Kirsten. He knew that Phil was out of the country (he had been on TV drinking champagne in Greenland), so they went to his house to meet Kirsten. She was there with her friend, Janet. Owen was able to look in Kirsten's eyes instead of at her feet, but he could still tell that she was going weak at the knees. Janet couldn't keep her hands off Craig. They conducted an experiment to see how many naked people they could get into the swimming pool. They were able to demonstrate that four people would fit in it with plenty of room to spare.


When Phil arrived home he had no desire to make it five. He had been thrown out of Greenland. Ever since he first met Kirsten he'd been afraid that she'd fall for someone else and he'd end up having to kill someone, because he didn't want to kill anyone, even though he often said he did. Coming home to find his wife partaking in a swimming pool experiment meant that he'd have to kill someone. He didn't have any choice in the matter.


When he went upstairs to get his gun, the subjects in the experiment got dressed. Craig, Owen and Janet climbed over the wall at the back of the garden and Kristen stayed behind to see if she could talk some sense into her husband. Sense had been talked out of Phil years earlier, and he paid no attention to Kirsten. He followed Craig, Owen and Janet.


Craig said he knew a perfect place to hide. It was an abandoned warehouse. So they went there, and they thought they'd be safe, but Phil must have been following the smell. They heard him trying to break down a door.


"I think it's time we formed an escape committee," Janet said.


A man came out of an office. He said, "My name is Bob and I'd like to apply for the job of chairman of the committee."


He showed them his CV. He had served as the chairman of many committees. They interviewed him for the job, and they had to make a quick decision. The only other candidate was Craig, and he had been picking his nose during his interview, so they hired Bob. He immediately convened the first meeting. It had only just begun when Phil broke down the door. Craig, Owen and Janet ran into the office. Bob admonished them for leaving the meeting before the end, but he followed them when he saw Phil's gun.


They broke a window in the office to get away, but they didn't get far. Their escape was blocked by a brick wall. They watched as Phil approached with his gun. The only weapon they had to defend themselves was a frog, but fortunately Phil had a fear of frogs. Craig put the frog on the ground and it started jumping towards Phil. He shot at it a few times, but he missed and he used up all his bullets. He ran away.


Bob said, "As chairman of the committee, I'd like to extend my thanks to this humble frog, who performed above and beyond the call of duty in the name of justice and honour. He brought honour to his species in expediting the work of this committee. When faced with the prospect of becoming just a green goo, he chose to advance rather than retreat. Only through this action can I now proclaim the work of the committee to be complete."


"What if he just gets more ammo?" Janet said.


"There's only one way to find out," Craig said.


They went back to Phil's house. They looked over the wall into the back garden. They saw Phil inside. He had a machine gun and he was putting bullets into an ammunition belt.


"I think it's time to get Bertha," Owen said.


Bertha was a weapon they'd developed in the lab. It emitted an electric shock that would incapacitate a man by making him laugh for three hours. Owen had called it Bertha after his aunt, whose voice could make a storm retreat with a whimper.


Craig, Owen, Janet and Bob went to the lab. They removed Bertha from its cabinet and they put it into a wooden box. They went back to Phil's house and looked over the garden wall again. Phil was putting bullets into another belt. Kirsten was there too. "We need to get her out of the way," Owen said. "Bertha can lose control when she's angry."


"I'll see to that," Bob said. "I'll go around the front and ring the doorbell. I'll say I'm looking for directions."


Bob left them, and a few minutes later they heard the sound of the doorbell. Kirsten went inside to answer it. Owen climbed over the wall with Bertha. Phil was so surprised that he nearly fell into the swimming pool.


"This time it's personal," Owen said.


"What was it the last time?" Phil said.


"It was..." Owen tried to think of what it was, but his thoughts didn't progress very far. Phil turned around when he saw the look of shock on Owen's face. They both saw Bob and Kirsten on a sofa inside. Bob had put some of the green goo on his neck when they were at the lab, and Kirsten found him impossible to resist. Phil went inside. He decided that Bob was the one he should be killing. Bob ran away, but he didn't get far. He couldn't open the front door. Phil had enough ammunition to kill every living creature on a large farm, but he couldn't kill Bob. He couldn't bring himself to kill anyone. He ended up paying Bob to stay quiet about the whole thing.


The moose's head over the fireplace has an interest in science. I've been reading him passages from my grandfather's notebooks. These notebooks record numerous experiments conducted in my grandfather's laboratory (the garden shed). He started out with the intention of building a perpetual motion machine, but he ended up making tiny phones for garden gnomes. The gnomes didn't have much use for the phones, but they did prove to be a very effective way of electrocuting rats.