The Field

We've had a lot of rain recently. I enjoy looking out the window at the garden in the rain, but there are a few distractions on TV, like the snooker, Munster's victory in the Heineken Cup, and the Champions League. It's going to be an all English final this year. In Moscow. The wife's aunt has no interest in sport, so she spends a lot of time looking out the window. If she was outside she'd keep looking up at the sky. When she was young she threw an apple in the air and it never came back down. She's been looking out for it ever since.

My cousin Charlie saw three women in a field behind his house one evening. They were very well dressed, and they wore shoes that were completely inappropriate for walking in the fields. They stayed there talking for about an hour before they left the field.

On the following evening the three women turned up in the same place at the same time. Once again, they were dressed as if they were going to a wedding or to a regatta. Charlie could just about hear their voices. They sounded like the sort of people who'd go to regattas or to polo matches.

They arrived in the field again on the following evening. Charlie walked to where they stood and he said hello. Only one of them responded with a 'hello', and her voice was as cold as ice. Charlie spoke about the weather and the fox he'd seen in this field a few days earlier, but the women remained silent. He got the impression that they disapproved of the way he dressed. One of them wasn't putting much effort into hiding her disgust as she looked at his trousers. So Charlie said goodbye and he walked home.

He returned on the following evening. This time he wore his best suit, and the women were delighted to see him. He couldn't get away from them. They told him about a concert by a chamber orchestra and about a friend of theirs whose dog couldn't stop sneezing. After about an hour they decided it was time to go home, and they told him they'd be deeply offended if he didn't join them again on the following evening.

Charlie kept meeting the women over the following days, and other people joined them as well. After two weeks, over twenty people would meet in the field every evening. They all wore their best clothes. One woman brought a butler who had a picnic basket and a wooden case containing a tea set. He served tea to all of them.

One evening, Phil and Dylan were walking through a nearby field when they saw the gathering. Charlie knew Phil and Dylan from the pub. They stood at a ditch and stared at the people who were chatting and drinking tea. The women would certainly have disapproved of the way Phil and Dylan dressed, but they stayed in the other field, at the other side of the ditch.

On the following evening they returned to that field and they brought some of their friends. They had enough drink to last them a whole night but they managed to get through all of it in an hour. They laughed and fought and fell over. There was a fine line between laughing and fighting, and the fighting always ended when one or both fell over, and then the laughter began again.

On the following evening there were many more people in the other field. They drank, fought, laughed and fell over again, and they also did stupid things, like cycling off a tree (it was really just falling off a bike in a tree, and then the bike would fall down on top of them and everyone would laugh) and Charlie desperately wanted to join them.

But they made it perfectly clear that Charlie wasn't welcome. When they met him on the street or in the pub they ignored him. The only time they spoke to him was when they called him a snob. Charlie realised that he had to earn their respect if he wanted to join them in their field. So one day he spent a few hours drinking before going to the field for the evening gathering. When he arrived he was wearing his old clothes and he had a bottle of whiskey in his hand. The other people were shocked by his appearance. He took a drink from the bottle and he said, "You people aren't real. Ye're sub-people, not even ghosts. Ye'll never have the spirit of a ghost. Ye're so buttoned-down and buttoned-up the button industry would collapse if ye were all killed in a bus crash. But that's never going to happen because ye wouldn't be seen dead on a bus. They say that the hair and finger nails of dead people keep growing after they die. For days after ye die ye'll still be looking down on people, especially the ones up above, dancing on the grave. But that won't be me in the grave. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not going to turn out like ye."

He took another drink from the bottle and then he walked away.

When he returned to the field on the following evening he expected to be ignored, or else they'd ask him to leave and then he could join Phil and the others in the other field. But to his horror he was welcomed with open arms. All of the men and women who used to wear their best clothes were now wearing old clothes, and they all had a bottle of something-or-other. They thanked Charlie for telling them the truth. He'd become their role model.

They drank and they said exactly what was on their minds. When these two things are combined, fighting inevitably follows. Laughter normally followed the fighting. Phil and his friends didn't do much drinking that evening. They spent most of the time looking into the other field. On the following evening they didn't do much drinking either. They just stood there and they spoke about drinking. They didn't really have much else to talk about. They started to become more conscious about the way they dressed. Some of them started wearing suits.

Charlie was still stuck in the other field, surrounded by drinking and fighting, which is exactly what he wanted to be doing with Phil and his friends, but it wasn't any fun with these people. Their fights only lasted one punch, if you could call it a punch. One man was knocked over by a punch that narrowly missed his head.

Charlie didn't feel he was part of the group, and the others were still rejecting him. He went into the other field one evening but they ignored him. He called them snobs and he left. He went to another field. He spent the evenings there, all on his own, observing the goings-on in the other fields. This turned out to be a very interesting pastime. Phil and his friends became more refined as time went by, but it didn't seem real, just as the other group's conversion to loutishness didn't seem real. The fact that they still used words like 'loutishness' undermined their credibility as louts. It didn't take long before they started shouting abuse at Phil and his friends, and it didn't take long for this latter group to drop their refined facade and shout back. Charlie had a perfect view of the fight that ensued. Some people sought refuge in Charlie's field, and he allowed them in. The fight went on for another few days. The number of refugees in Charlie's field kept growing. They drank wine and they looked at the fight. It was a pleasant way to pass the time.

In the end there were only two fighters left: Phil and a man who used to tell Charlie about his yacht. Unsurprisingly, Phil emerged victorious. The elation of victory didn't last long. He realised he was all alone in the field, and he asked Charlie if he could enter the other field. "It's lonely at the top, Phil," was all Charlie said.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the snooker on TV. Ronnie O'Sullivan's performance on Monday was even more exciting than the thunder and lightning outside. A friend of mine used to be a good snooker player until a gypsy put a curse on him. As a result of the curse, he has a hump on his back, like a camel. No one wants to drink the water he keeps in it.

The Car Salesman and his Wife

The missing garden gnome turned up alive and well in a box in the shed. I noticed that the other gnomes would move around the garden during the night. I have a feeling they were playing hide-and-seek.

My cousin Gary has a friend called Ruth who's obsessed with fashion. She has a different style almost every day. It changes with the weather. Sometimes the weather forecasters get it wrong and she wears something that looks out of place, but most of the time she gets it just right. The sight of her in the clothes she wears to compete with the sun has been known to make people spontaneously dance in fountains. Someone once said that if you put a lamp shade on her head you could use her to read at night, although using her to read would be a waste.

When Gary was taking a second-hand car out for a test drive the salesman went with him to make sure he didn't steal it. When the salesman asked Gary if he'd ever stolen a car before he said 'no', but even Gary himself thought he didn't sound too sure about it. Gary spent the whole time talking about Ruth because he couldn't think of anything else to talk about. The salesman started crying at the end of the test drive. Gary was going to ask what was wrong but he started whistling instead. The salesman told him what was wrong anyway. He said she sounded just like his wife, and his wife was inching towards being his ex-wife.

"I hate it when people inch," Gary said. "When you're going to do something you should do it decisively or don't do it at all. Run away rather than inching away. Or stay where you are. Generally speaking you're better off running. When a woman once told me about the depressed crows who perch on her hat I ran away. When I was in a choir and I realised that everyone else in the choir was holding a small iron, I ran away and I nearly knocked myself unconscious when I ran into a door."

The salesman stopped crying. The silence that followed was a bit awkward so Gary said, "My friend Jack says that you can learn everything you need to know about women from looking at penguins."

"What could you learn from looking at penguins?"

"I don't know. I think his point is that you don't really need to know a whole lot."

"I've tried not knowing a lot and it hasn't worked."

"Do you ever buy her things when it isn't her birthday or Christmas?"

"No."

"Try that. Christmas and birthday presents are almost always a disappointment, but get her something when she isn't expecting anything and she'll be delighted. As long as it's something that doesn't bite her. Get her something dead."

"Like what?"

"Fish. Get her some fish. That's what a penguin would do."

"I don't know."

"No, seriously, get her some fish. Fresh fish. A whole fish with a head and eyes. It might not sound very romantic to bring home something and say, 'Could you cut the head off this thing and cook it for me?' But trust me, she'll love it. As long as it's not a really ugly fish. Get her a salmon or something."

"She'd never expect me to do something like that."

"Which is exactly why you should do it. She's inching away from the man she thinks you are. Show her you're not that man."

Gary came back a few days later to buy the car, and the salesman seemed much happier. "It worked," he said. "I brought home a salmon and she said it was the first unselfish thing I'd ever done. We had a beautiful candle-lit dinner and she's inching back towards me now, leaving the door open for me to run through the open door and leave her."

"You want to leave her?"

"Yeah. I couldn't let her go first. Even when she was inching away she had a head start."

"Why do you want to leave her?"

"She can be so annoying at times. Not all the time, but sometimes. And when she's not being annoying she's just being silent, which is good, up to a point. That would be the point at which I wonder why she doesn't want to talk to me. But most importantly of all, she wanted to leave me. Some men want what they can't have, but for me, when women think they'd be better off outside of my vicinity they go way down in my estimation."

"But she wants to be with you now."

"Only because I did something unselfish."

"Looking at penguins would be much less complicated."

"We'll discuss the car in a minute, but first things first. When are you going to introduce me to this friend of yours? Ruth."

"You said she reminded you of your wife. Why would you want to meet her?"

"She reminds me of all the good points of my wife."

"It's completely unrealistic to expect a woman you've never met to have all of the good points of your wife without any of the bad points. She once bit a donkey. Did your wife ever bite a donkey?"

"No."

"That's one-nil to your wife. Your view of your wife is being distorted by your view of Ruth and vice versa. You see an idealised woman in Ruth and this highlights all of your wife's flaws because in your mind you've defined Ruth as someone who possesses none of your wife's flaws."

"Can we talk about penguins again?"

"Give your wife another chance. The fact that you want to be with someone like your wife is a good sign."

"Since when has wanting to be with someone else been good for the health of your marriage?"

"You've just got to remember that your wife is someone just like your wife. She's more like your wife than anyone else. Meeting Ruth would only be a disappointment because she wouldn't be similar enough to your wife."

"I'm willing to take my chances."

"Give your wife another chance, and if it doesn't work out I'll introduce you to Ruth. You need to inject a bit more romance into your relationship. Trust me on this. I'm an expert on romance."

"When you ran from the woman with the depressed crows was that the romantic thing to do?"

"That had nothing to do with romance."

"Were you romantically involved with her at the time?"

"Yes, but it had nothing to do with romance. With a bit of romance ye could both see each other in a different light. And if ye see each other in a different light it's a perfect time for romance. Ye need a new setting. Where would ye normally go on holidays or for weekend breaks?"

"Galway. Kerry. Spain. Mullingar. She has relatives in Mullingar. Thankfully they stay there. She's a librarian, and one of her work colleagues has a holiday home in Mayo. We've been there once."

"Take her somewhere different, somewhere you'd never think of going."

"How am I supposed to think of a place I'd never think of?"

"Have you ever considered going to Berlin, or Vienna, or Oslo?"

"No."

"Well go to Berlin or Vienna or Oslo."

"I suppose we could go to Vienna."

He didn't sound very enthusiastic about this trip. Gary told him that there's no point in doing things half-heartedly. And there's no point in doing something for a second time if it didn't work the first time. If you do it again, the chances are you'll do it with half the heart you put into it the first time around. If you absolutely have to do something twice, you could wear different clothes the second time around, or do it while standing on one leg, or pretend to be French, or learn Russian first and refuse to use your Russian when undertaking your undertaking for the second time, doing it exactly like you did it the first time, only with a working knowledge of Russian safely locked inside your head, with the knowledge that you could use it, but you won't. Give everyday activities an edge, a shot of excitement, by vowing never to use your Russian. It's not worth doing something if you can't put your whole heart into it, and you can do it again whole-heartedly if you just make a minor change to the surface. If I sound as if I'm repeating myself, that's because I am, only I'm dressing the sentences in different clothes. They wear different words. Sometimes I'll need to remind you of things in the murky depths of the distant past, things that can easily be forgotten. Sometimes I'll have no need to remind you of things, but I will anyway, such as the fact that Jack learnt everything he knows about women from looking at penguins. I don't know if he learnt everything he knows about penguins from looking at women. You might say that I shouldn't dress sentences up in any unnecessary words or phrases. Remove their clothes, leaving the naked truth, the bare facts. If someone loses the use of their clothes and comes close enough to your vicinity for you to be able to say 'hmm' or 'ahh' or 'huh?' or 'hn', you won't need to be reminded of that three paragraphs later. You might not want to be reminded of that at all. Alternatively, you might remind yourself of it on a regular basis to turn on the central heating in your mind. In terms of sentences, the ones without clothes would be those of the form 'So-and-so is a so-and-so'. You don't need to be reminded of these if the form is actualised in sentences like 'Jack is an alien' (this is just an example -- Jack is not an alien), but what about lines like 'Jack is a bit tired'. And Jack being a bit tired could be even more significant than Jack being an alien, although maybe not for Jack himself, (I can't say for sure because I don't know anything about Jack -- I'm just assuming he's not an alien). I know someone who thought he was an alien once. I know someone else who conducted a closer examination to determine if he really was an alien. I know many people who objected to this. I remain to this day a dedicated member of 'many people', and I'll always go for the option that involves clothes. It's one of our core beliefs. I've heard of groups whose most prominent features include 'many people' and 'no clothes', and in some cases you could add aliens onto that list as well, but that's neither here nor there (I'd give you directions if I knew where it was). The blunt, rusty point is this: don't do things half-heartedly, and do things differently to keep the heart whole.

It might also be said that the previous sentence didn't need to be buried at the bottom of the previous paragraph, that it should have been left on its own and we could all have learnt Russian in the time we saved. I'll take that point on board. The salesman accepted Gary's point about doing things whole-heartedly, and it worked. Gary went back to see him a few months later and he asked how the trip to Vienna went. "It couldn't have gone any better," the salesman said. "It was so much better than Mullingar. But it was even stranger than Mullingar, which was surprising. When I was waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel one evening I noticed that everyone around me was wearing blue clothes. I stood out like a sore thumb, and I got the feeling that they were all looking at me. There was an eerie atmosphere to the place. One of them said to me, 'If you were in space, would you worry about your head exploding?' I said 'no' without even thinking about the question. They all nodded. When my wife arrived they asked us if we'd like to join them for dinner. I didn't need to put much thought into that question to be able to say 'no', but she got there first with a 'yes'. As it happened, we had a great time with those people. It filled our hearts again. It's like a fresh start to our marriage."

As it happened, the people in the blue clothes could be described as 'many people', and when they weren't wearing blue clothes they believed in wearing no clothes at all. I don't know if they believed in aliens. You can read what you like into the question about the exploding head in space. The salesman and his wife became honourary members of the group over the weekend. They both discovered that they were both committed to each other, and that that committment would be even greater if they could be with other people as well. So he was still interested in meeting Ruth. Gary asked what library his wife worked in, just out of curiosity.

The moose's head over the fireplace knows Russian. He can never use it, but the fact that he knows it surely adds a shot of excitement to his daily activities, or activity (staring at the wall). We only found out about his knowledge of Russian at a party we had when one of the neighbours brought a Russian friend. He got drunk and he told a joke in his native tongue. The moose's head definitely looked as if he understood it. The wife's uncle says he can speak a few words of Russian, but all he could make out was something about an ostrich farm.

The Anchor

One of the garden gnomes has gone missing. The dog probably buried it somewhere. The wife's aunt has launched an investigation. Detective novels are her latest craze. A friend of hers used to write detective novels entirely in numbers. Nine always did it.

My uncle Cyril often walked through the fields to the pub in his younger days. This activity has been restricted in recent years because his wife, Joyce, thinks that only animals walk through fields and that the sort of people who frequent pubs could only ever aspire to be animals. He's starting to agree with her about the latter point. He thinks that most of the young people who go to the pub don't need alcohol to make them behave like idiots. This is another reason for him to stay at home or visit his friends.

When he was in his twenties, he was walking to the pub one evening when he saw a man dragging an anchor through a field. Cyril asked him why he was doing it and the man said, "I could ask exactly the same question of you."

"Well, you could, and I'd say, 'I'm not dragging an anchor.'"

"And I could say, 'Are you sure about that?'"

"You could, and I'd almost certainly say, 'I'm almost certain I'm not dragging an anchor. The last time I checked there was no anchor.'"

"Yeah, and I'd say, 'Well maybe you should check again, just to be completely certain.'"

"Right. I'd almost certainly take that advice on board. And if it turned out that I was dragging an anchor, wouldn't you ask me why?"

"No. I'd already know why you're dragging an anchor. I'd assume the reason behind it is the same reason why I'm dragging an anchor."

"And what is that reason?"

"I don't know."

"Okay. That's all I really wanted to know. Goodbye."

"Wait a minute... Do y' see that bird over there?"

Cyril looked to where the man was pointing, but there was no bird. When he heard the word 'catch' he looked around and he saw the chain being thrown at him. He caught it. The man ran a few yards away. He stopped, turned around and laughed.

"Why are you dragging an anchor?" he said. "I could ask that question of you. You couldn't ask that question of me, or you could, but I'd have to say, 'I'm not dragging an anchor at all, or at least I wasn't the last time I checked.'"

"I'm not dragging anchor."

"Are you sure about that? Just because you weren't dragging an anchor the last time you checked it doesn't mean you're not dragging one now."

"I'm holding a chain. There's a big difference."

The man laughed and ran away. He climbed over a gate at the end of the field and he disappeared.

Cyril put the chain down on the ground and he walked away, but a sense of fear invaded his mind, and that fear grew the further away he went. He stopped and looked back at the anchor. He ran towards it. When he picked up the chain the fear vanished, and he started to get a sense of why the man was dragging the anchor.

He tried to drag it, but he gave up after a few yards. After an hour he made another attempt to leave the anchor. He walked away, and he told himself there was nothing to be fearful of, that it was all in his mind. But fear was all there was in his mind and he had to go back to the anchor.

After midnight he heard the sound of someone singing. He recognised the voice. It was his friend Bertie, who was on his way back from the pub. Cyril called out his name, and Bertie came over to the anchor.

"I know this is going to sound odd," Cyril said, "but I can't leave this anchor."

"That doesn't sound odd at all."

"It doesn't?"

"Not in the slightest."

"You don't think it's odd that I can't leave this anchor?"

"When you put it like that, it does sound a bit odd alright."

"The man who was dragging it through the field got me to hold the chain. Every time I walk away I'm filled with fear and I have to come back."

"Have you tried running away?"

"No."

"I'll race you to the end of the field."

Bertie tripped over his laces three yards into the run. Cyril didn't get much further. He turned around and returned to the anchor.

Bertie picked himself up and he said, "Now that we've established beyond all reasonable doubt that it's odd, I think we should consult Eddie on this. He's an expert on all things odd."

"Okay, but I'll need your help to drag it."

"How do I know you won't just run away and leave me with the anchor?"

"If I wanted to do that I'd have just asked you to hold the chain, and you'd have done it. You held onto that pig just because your cousin asked you to."

"Fair enough."

It was after one o' clock by the time they'd dragged the anchor to Eddie's house, but he was still up. There was a light on in a window, and they saw him reading inside. Bertie knocked on the window and Eddie opened it. Cyril told him the story of the anchor.

"What you've got there," Eddie said, "is Denny's anchor, unless there are two such anchors in the area. Denny died recently and I suppose someone must have been clearing out his house and his garden, and they came across this."

"Wasn't Denny the man who lived near the florist?" Cyril said.

"That's the fella."

"I don't think I ever saw him."

"You fellas would be too young to have seen him. This anchor used to be on a ship that his grandfather sailed on. He travelled all around the world on that ship. He brought all sorts of exotic things home with him. I've heard it said that one of his rashes made the parish priest take a trip to the Vatican to describe what he had seen. The ship was wrecked on the Kerry coast. Some people would say that's what happens when you come into contact with Kerry. All of the sailors were taking souvenirs from the wreckage. Denny's grandfather took the anchor because that's just the sort of man he was. He'd have to out-drink and out-eat everyone. He was always lifting things just to show how strong he was. He had lifted everyone on the ship apart from the captain. So when the others were taking barometers or bits of rope, it was inevitable that he'd take the anchor. After he died it ended up with Denny's uncle, and after the uncle died no one else wanted it so Denny took it. He used to keep it in his back garden.

"He got on very well with the woman who lived next door, so well that they both started thinking they couldn't live as neighbours for much longer. They'd have to get married. There are some marriages that would be more successful if the husband and wife were neighbours, but Denny was starting to consider the possibility of moving in with her, or of her moving in with him. He'd probably have moved in with her, because he was the one who was always visiting her. She rarely visited him, but she made it clear that he was more than welcome at her house. She loved listening to his stories about the time he spent working as a game-keeper and his battle of wits with a poacher who could climb a tree as fast as a squirrel, and he could pick a squirrel's pockets too, if a squirrel had pockets.

"She had a party one summer evening and she invited him. So he went along and he had a few drinks and told a few stories. He thought it went very well, but on the following evening she was very cold towards him when he called around to see her. She said he had told a story in which the poacher had stolen his trousers. She thought that some of the language wasn't appropriate and she demanded an apology. He told her he had a problem with the word 'demand'. If she had said, 'I'd be very grateful if you'd apologise, please,' he'd have gladly offered his sincerest apologies, but she refused to do this. The demand remained on the table, so he walked away. He never visited her house again and she never visited his, but they often spoke to each other over the hedge that separated their back gardens. She often repeated her demand for the apology, and he'd repeat his request to withdraw the demand and replace it with a request, but neither of them would back down. And then one evening she brought her grandmother into the back garden. Her grandmother was a fearsome woman. Even dogs couldn't meet her gaze. They'd slink away with their tails between their legs. Some humans weren't as sensible. There was a man who once asked her if she'd seen his goat. She considered this to be an insult because she wasn't the sort of woman who'd go about the place seeing goats. She put a curse on him so that he couldn't consume alcohol without unburdening himself of all of his problems. Telling people your problems might be a fashionable thing to do these days, but back then the done thing was to keep it all in and let your anger out by shooting something. He had to give up the drink, which did nothing for his anger. God knows how many animals he shot over the years. God knows, and if they were all waiting for him up in heaven he might have been better off going to the other place.

"Denny saw the top of her head over the hedge one evening. If he'd seen her eyes he might have apologised there and then, but he didn't. His neighbour repeated her demand and he repeated his request. She responded by introducing her grandmother. When the pleasantries were completed, the old woman said something in Irish that sent a shiver down Denny's spine. He went inside to his house, but he was filled with fear as soon as he closed the door behind him. He had to go back outside to the anchor. When he held its chain he felt safe. He stayed with it for a few hours before trying to go inside again, but the fear returned.

"He stayed with the anchor for nearly forty years, until he died. He dragged it to a downstairs window, and he used to sleep on a bed just inside the window, with the chain in his hand. He spent most of his days in the garden. He used to speak to her every day. It was almost like a marriage, but you couldn't consummate it with a hedge in the way, despite what a cousin of mine says. He just had to apologise to her for the curse to be lifted, but he wouldn't. He never considered the possibility that he could pass the curse on if he passed the chain on. He was very protective of the anchor, so he never let anyone else touch it. Someone obviously touched it after he died, and now it's ended up in your hands."

"How am I going to get rid of it?"

"Just pass it on to someone else."

"I'd only be lumbering someone else with the problem. That would be a much better state of affairs than being lumbered with the problem myself, but that other person could pass it on to someone else and then get revenge on me."

"You can turn any situation to your advantage. See this as an opportunity."

"Being stuck to an anchor closes off almost every opportunity I had before."

"What if you passed it on to someone who wanted to be stuck in one place?"

"Who'd want that?"

"I know plenty of people who want to give up the drink or cigarettes or affairs with women who live too close for comfort. You could charge these people to take the anchor for a weekend, just to stop them going to the pub or to the shop for cigarettes or next door to show their neighbour how to use her shower."

"Would people actually pay for that?"

"First thing in the morning I'll introduce you to a man who'll pay whatever you ask to keep him away from his neighbour. It might stop him calling around here to drink and cry and tell me about his guilt."

This man paid Cyril a hundred pounds to keep the anchor for a weekend. He needed it on the following weekend as well. Cyril kept hiring out the anchor over the next two years. He made a lot of money from it, but there were a few times when no one wanted it and he was stuck with it himself. On these occasions he couldn't get away from Joyce, who wouldn't stop complaining about the anchor, so he sold it to a man who wanted to stay away from a woman whose presence was as powerful as alcohol in his bloodstream. She always made him do stupid things (she asked him to do stupid things and he always said 'okay'). Attaching himself to an anchor seemed sensible in comparison to most of the things she got him to do.

The moose's head over the fireplace is still recovering after another visit from the wife's niece. It was her birthday last week. Her mother brought her around on Saturday to collect her presents. We got her a cake as well. A neighbour of ours has a small cake-making business, so we got her to make it. She'll write any message on the icing. Spelling mistakes ruined some cakes in the past, so now she includes deliberate mistakes and she draws a red line under them, like the lines drawn by the spell checker of a word processor. The cake we got said 'Happy Burthday'. This gave the wife's niece an idea. Now she draws red lines on everything she thinks needs correcting, which is just about everything. She drew a line under a shelf I put up and she said her line was straighter.

The Spider

We have to get over a brief return of winter before spring can truly bloom. I'm looking forward to spending more time in the garden and having long conversations with the flowers. My grandfather often spent evenings talking to them and he said they used to respond. I think he might have been sniffing something else instead of just the flowers. The flowers never respond when I talk to them. They never show the slightest sign that they can hear me, and that's part of the appeal. They remind me of my younger days when I'd talk to women.

My cousin Gary saw a spider on the wall when he woke up one morning. He drew an arrow on the wall to indicate the spot where the spider was. On the following morning he saw another spider on the wall. This one was in a different place, but Gary tried to get it to move to the spot where he'd seen the first spider so he wouldn't have to draw another arrow, but the spider didn't take any notice of the things Gary said. He remembered a conversation about food he'd once had with his friend Monica in which she'd said, "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's getting spiders to move." So he called her on the phone and he told her about his problem. She said she'd come around and see what she could do.

The spider didn't listen to her either, but she didn't give up. She suggested gluing a dead fly to the pointy end of the arrow as a bait to lure the spider there. They just needed to find a dead fly.

Monica suggested that Justin would be the man to go to if you wanted a dead fly. She thought he'd just need to look in his hair.

So they went to see Justin, but he refused to look in his hair and he refused to help them catch a fly. "I own a fly," he said. "He's a pet. He gets on well with my greyhound, assuming he's a he, the fly. The greyhound is definitely a he. It's easier to check with dogs. When they play together people only notice the greyhound. Only super-intelligent robots notice the fly. People think that the greyhound has an imaginary friend. The fly has an imaginary friend. He's a six-foot tall rabbit. They play together in the garden while the dog's asleep. My imaginary friend only notices the rabbit. My imaginary friend is at war with super-intelligent robots."

Gary and Monica carefully considered what Justin said and they both came to the same conclusion: he needs to get out more.

Monica suggested going for a walk in the park, but Justin said, "I don't like going to the park. Birds always used to take my glasses. I thought it would be better when I started wearing contact lenses, but no, it's much worse."

"They can sense your fear," Monica said. "You need to have an air of confidence about you. Hold your head high. Tell yourself you have nothing to fear from birds, that a bird might try to take your contact lenses once, but they wouldn't try it twice. They won't try it at all if they sense your confidence."

He agreed to try this, so they went to the park. He held his head high and he walked with a sense of purpose, and it worked. The birds stayed well away from him. Justin felt on top of the world. He thought he could take on anyone or anything. They went to the pub and he saw a good-looking woman at the bar. He was determined not to let opportunities like these slip away again, so he went over to her and he said, "How would you like to go out with a man who knows pi to four-hundred decimal places."

"I'd love to," she said, "as long as he doesn't recite pi to four-hundred decimal places."

"That can be arranged."

Her name was Edel. She agreed to go out with Justin on the following evening, but she neglected to mention that she already had a boyfriend, sort of. His name was Dominic, and he had said to her that he thought they should be able to see other people. When he said 'I think we should be able to see other people' what he actually meant was 'I think I should be able to see other people'. He thought she understood this. He was furious when he found out about her date with Justin.

When Justin was feeling superior to the birds in the park on the following day, he was confronted by Dominic. Gary and Monica were there too. Dominic said, "You won't be looking so happy with yourself for much longer. Birds will be flying around your head when I'm finished with you. When you ask a man's girlfriend out on a date you've got to face the consequences. When you ask a man out on a date you might end up with very similar consequences. Of course, you might end up with a date as well."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" Justin said.

"Because you said that, I'm going to have to punch you in the face twice as often as I was planning to do."

"You wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would you?"

"You're not wearing glasses."

"Oh yeah. I forgot. But I'm wearing contact lenses."

"So am I, so we're evens. You're perfectly entitled to hit me too."

"Do you ever find that birds take your contact lenses?"

"No. A cat once ate one of them."

"Did it do any damage to your eye?"

"I wasn't wearing it at the time. It had fallen on the floor and I was looking for it, but the cat found it first. Something about the fluid from my eye must have convinced the cat that this would make a good meal. That cat's colon must have got a very clear view of the outside world when the contact lens was coming out the other end."

"Maybe there's some other way we could settle this."

"Like what?"

"Why don't we just let Edel decide?"

"Decide what?"

"Which one of us should be the winner."

"On what basis would she decide?"

"She'd choose whichever one of us she wants to be with."

Dominic stared blankly back. He clearly didn't understand this concept. He didn't really understand women, so Justin said, "We could fight in theory, but not in practise. Edel would be the judge. She'd consider what means you'd use to win a fight, and she'd consider the means I'd use, if we were actually fighting. She'd decide who the winner would be if we fought."

"That's fine by me. She's not stupid. She'd obviously choose me."

"You said it yourself. She's not stupid. Stupid people only think of violence because that's all they have. She'll consider other means to win a fight, like cunning and strategy. She'll take intelligence into account."

"I'm not worried about that. You can't be all that clever if birds keep taking your contact lenses."

They explained their proposal to her and she said she'd need time to consider who the winner of the fight should be. Justin did his best to impress her on their date that night. He took her to a restaurant and he insisted on paying. Dominic took her to the most expensive restaurant in town on the following evening.

At first she enjoyed all the attention, and she wanted to drag this out for as long as possible, but their attempts to impress her became tiresome. Dominic kept telling her stories of his past prowess in physical fights. When they were in the pub one evening he said, "Did I ever tell you about the time I fought the jazz thieves?"

"Yes. You tell me a variation of that story every time you get drunk."

He didn't seem to notice that comment. He said, "I went to a party at Rachel's house and she had a jazz band playing there. I don't know why she had a jazz band. I think she might have been having a nervous breakdown at the time. Nervous breakdowns were all the rage last year, but they seem to have fallen out of fashion now. You'd hear conversations when someone would say, "I had a nervous breakdown, and after I got over that I went into rehab, and then I had another nervous breakdown.' And the other person would say, 'I've been in rehab three times this year and I've had two nervous breakdowns and I lost a bit of weight as well.' I thought about having a nervous breakdown once. I was going to start ringing a bell. But I forgot about it. Anyway, the party went well, despite the jazz band. At about three o' clock in the morning, when some people were starting to fall asleep, I went out in the garden to have a cigarette. I had a bottle of something to keep me company. It was a beautiful night. The Milky Way was making its way across the sky. But I got a sense that I wasn't alone. I listened carefully and I could hear footsteps. I looked around and I saw two men whose arms were loaded with jazz instruments. They were obviously thieves because neither of them had been in the band. Seeing as they were stealing jazz instruments I assumed they were thieves in the middle of nervous breakdowns. They couldn't take all of the instruments with them. They'd have needed another member of their group to take the double bass, but they did have a trumpet, a saxophone, a trombone and most of the drum kit. I decided to intervene. Admittedly, if they were the sort of creatures who populate dark alleys and wear brass knuckles, I'd have refrained from the fight, but I was willing to take on thieves with armfuls of brass instruments, despite being outnumbered. I blocked their path and I told them to return the instruments or face the consequences. They decided to go for the latter option. Obviously their conception of the consequences was different from mine. I demonstrated my conception after they put the instruments down. I punched one of them in the stomach, and then a left to the jaw sent him staggering backwards. The other one came at me. I used a move I learnt from Bruce Lee and I sent him crashing into a tree trunk. People came out of the house to see what was going on, but there wasn't much to see. It didn't take long before I had the instruments in a neat pile on the grass and the thieves in another pile next to them."

Justin didn't have any stories of his physical prowess. He decided to serenade her instead. He played the accordion and he sang a song. It was a song he wrote himself. He'd been playing the accordion since he was three. His ability to play it then was impeded by the fact that he couldn't lift it. This is what attracted him to the instrument. It seemed exciting to be playing an instrument that was nearly as big as him. But as the years went by, Justin grew and the accordion didn't. There was nothing exciting about it in his teens. He hadn't played it in a few years, but this didn't deter him from playing it for Edel. He hadn't written a song since he was six, when he wrote a song about The Muppets, but this didn't deter him from writing a song for Edel either. He didn't have to come up with much new material because he was able to use most of the music and some of the lyrics from the Muppets song.

Gary and Monica went to see Edel one day and they asked her if she'd made a decision. She said, "I just can't decide. Right now it's like trying to decide between the lesser of two idiots."

"Why don't you just toss a coin?" Gary said.

"That would be an appropriate way of deciding between the two of them."

Gary gave her a coin. She was just about to throw it in the air when she stopped. She looked at Gary and then she threw the coin away. She smiled at him and she said, "I'd rather go out with you."

Gary smiled back at her. He was proud of the way he had seduced her without even knowing he was seducing her. He really wanted to look for his coin, but he thought this would only put her off.

He was just about to say he'd like to go out with her as well when he noticed the glare of Monica. He remembered Justin. It wouldn't be fair to his friend if he went out with Edel, so he said, "I really think you should give Justin a chance. "He won't be so annoying when he knows he's won you over."

"That's one possibility. The other possibility is that he'll be even more annoying when he stops putting the effort into not being annoying."

"You've already seen what Dominic is like when he isn't putting any effort into impressing you, and you obviously weren't all that impressed by him then."

She sighed and said, "I suppose so."

She didn't sound much more enthusiastic when she told Justin that she'd chosen him, but he felt like strutting and saying 'up yours' to the birds in the park. Dominic started crying when he heard the news, but she told him she had made her decision by tossing a coin and he was happy with that.

Gary and Monica never found a dead fly. Gary was just about to kill a fly at Justin's house when he heard the greyhound growling at him. He went home that evening and he saw that the spider had moved to the arrow of its own accord. Gary was much happier with this state of affairs, and the spider looked happier too.

The moose's head over the fireplace failed to predict the winner of the Grand National, but he did predict Bertie's resignation as Taoiseach last week. The wife's uncle raised a drink to honour Bertie's career when he heard the news. He would have had a drink anyway but it was nice to be able to garnish it with a toast to a man he admires. He's had financial problems of his own to contend with, but if he didn't have problems of some sort to contend with he'd have to get a hobby, and he considers himself far superior to people who have hobbies. He has affairs and flings and fights instead. Drinks would lose their edge if they didn't come with a need to forget his current woes or a need to indulge in nostalgia and recount his past woes.

The Cat

There's a lot of work to be done in the garden at this time of year. My grandfather always looked forward to it because he enjoyed being out of the house. There were times when he enjoyed being inside the house too, and there were many times when he enjoyed being inside the pub, but he rarely ventured much further afield. He was deeply suspicious of other places. He was proud of the fact that his clothes had not been polluted by the oppressive otherness of somewhere else. The otherness drove some people mad, he believed. They'd go through a sort of a death. Some would come out the other side less than what they were before, like meat that's been defrosted. Some would come out as other people. They'd be like keys that have been re-cut to fit the another lock. Their homeplaces would be other places. This is why he feared the otherness, and I think he had a point. I've heard that you can be pecked to death by hens in other places. I suppose it depends on where you go.

My cousin Isobel doesn't need to worry about the hens because she has a way with animals. This is obvious when you hear the sounds she makes to communicate with them, and with humans who lack the sophistication of intellect needed to be a fully paid member of civilised society (she was able to identify such people by a very brief appraisal of their fashion sense). When my two cousins, Ronan and Alan, were having trouble with a cat, they called her to investigate the matter further. The problem was that the cat wouldn't move. It sat on a spot in a field behind their parents' house. It remained there for over a week, and Ronan never saw it leave during that time, though it might well have left during the night. He would have been happy to let the cat stay there for as long as it wanted, but one day Alan suggested that the cat might be guarding something. "I've heard that cats can guard treasure," he said. "Fairies can control the cats, and make them protect the place where the treasure is buried."

"That doesn't sound very likely. A dog could guard a place. A cat is more of a marker for the place where the treasure is buried."

"Do you want to try physically moving a cat that's controlled by the fairies?"

"You don't believe in fairies, do you?"

"No. But I believe in cats. Do you want to try physically moving a cat who's determined to stay where he is?"

"No. But maybe we can entice him away."

They left food on the ground a few yards away from the cat, but it wouldn't move. They spoke to it, and they carefully explained all of the benefits of going somewhere else. They had heard many great things about other places, they said. Apparently there were even other places where hens could not be found, and they couldn't guarantee that this place didn't have hens hiding behind every bush and in holes and under old bits of carpet and in boxes and disguised as peacocks and camouflaged as plants.

This would certainly have made my grandfather abandon his anti-other-place policy, but the cat seemed quite content where it was. That's when they called in Isobel. They told her that they wanted to move the cat for its own benefit. It had been too long in one place and it had obviously forgotten that other places existed. As soon as she arrived the cat got up and walked to her. She tickled it and spoke to it, and when she walked away the cat followed her. Ronan and Alan started digging.

At seven o' clock in the evening they found a small metal box. They prized it open with a crowbar, and they found a map inside. A route was marked out on the map. Two 'X's marked the start and the end of the route. The start was where they were standing. "Let's go to the other X," Alan said. "This must be a treasure map."

They followed the route, and after half an hour of walking they reached the other X. It was in an overgrown garden in front of an abandoned house. Some of the windows were boarded up. The plaster was cracked, and one of the red brick chimneys was crumbling.

"We could either start digging in the garden," Alan said, "or we could search the house."

They went for the easier option, but just as they were about to knock down the front door it opened and a man came out. He asked them what they were doing.

"We're lost," Alan said. "We were following a map, and I don't know if it's the map that's wrong or us, but we're lost now."

"This could turn out to be a stroke of luck for all of us," the man said. "How would you fellas like to acquire a certain acquisition of a monetary nature?"

"It depends what you mean by 'like'."

"Come on inside and I'll explain the whole thing."

Then man's name was Tommy. He took them into the house. They sat at a bare wooden table and he poured three glasses of whiskey. He told them that there was a bag full of money under the floorboards in his grandfather's house. His grandfather had recently died, but Tommy had been unable to retrieve the money because all of the doors in the house were boarded up. His grandfather was afraid of thieves. He used to go in and out through the windows. Tommy couldn't get in through the window because of a bad back, and he couldn't lift the floorboards for the same reason. He wanted Ronan and Alan to go in and get the money, and they'd split it three ways.

It was dark when they went back outside. He took them to the house, which was about a mile away. It looked as if it hadn't been lived in for years, so Ronan and Alan didn't have any qualms about breaking in, but they should have learnt their lesson from the last time. As soon as they got inside a light came on and a man pointed a shotgun at them.

"Thieves," he said. "I don't have much time for thieves. Some people would love the company, but I don't have much time for company either."

"We thought the house was empty. A man told us that his grandfather lived here, and he wanted us to get something for him."

"Right. This 'man' wanted ye..." This man seemed to think of something. He looked out the window and he saw Tommy running away with a chainsaw. Tommy had used Ronan and Alan as a distraction while he took the chainsaw from the shed.

The man with the shotgun said to Ronan and Alan, "Ye can get two shovels from the shed and start digging two graves. It'll be a new experience for ye."

Alan put up a hand and said, "I've dug a grave before."

"Yeah, but it wasn't your own grave, was it? Or else you wouldn't be standing here now. You should be desperate to try new experiences at this stage in your life. My father started shooting and drinking all around him when he was told he had three months to live. It turned out to be three days, because of the shooting and drinking."

"Why don't you just point the gun at Tommy and ask for your chainsaw back."

"Because I know exactly how many guns he has. He's my brother. He knows very well that the chainsaw is rightfully mine."

"What if we got it back for you?"

"Get it back for me, and the three of us will go shooting and drinking together."

Ronan and Alan went back to Tommy's house. They looked in the kitchen window and they saw Tommy inside. He was drinking whiskey and singing a song. The chainsaw was on the table. They left the house and went back to their own place. They returned to Tommy's house a few hours later. Ronan looked in the bedroom window, and he saw Tommy sound asleep inside. He knocked on the glass a few times to wake him up. When Tommy woke he looked as if he was looking at a ghost, which is exactly what Ronan had been hoping for. He had used a red marker to draw a bullet hole on his forehead. He said, in a ghostly voice, "He made me dig my own graaaave. This is your faaault."

Tommy started screaming. He kept saying 'sorry' for about a minute, and then he started looking for his gun. This is when Ronan decided to make his exit. Alan had broken into the house and taken the chainsaw. They ran away. Tommy must have figured out what was going on because he sent a bullet after them, but it missed.

They took the chainsaw to Tommy's brother, who shot open a bottle of whiskey to celebrate. Ronan and Alan made their way home at dawn. All they got from their treasure hunt was a hangover. After a few hours of sleep they went to see Isobel. She showed them a silver cup. "The cat found it," she said. "He started digging a hole in the middle of a field. I couldn't convince him to stop digging, so I decided to help him. The cup was buried about a foot underground."

The moose's head over the fireplace often stares at the wife's aunt's cat, and the cat stares back at him. It's as if they both know something. The moose's head obviously knows a lot of things, from baroque music to what horse to bet on. It would make you wonder what the cat knows.