The Clown

It's still getting colder. Summers seemed much warmer when I was younger. When my grandfather was young the summers were hot enough to make horses faint, if you believe his stories about fainting horses. He claimed that winters were much colder then too. He says that his father once had to chase some Eskimos out of the garden. He kept coal in the igloo they left behind.

My cousin Ronan was looking after his niece and nephew, Daisy and Graham, one day when their parents were at a wedding. His plan was that the kids would watch TV while he read William Shatner's autobiography, but they had other things in mind. They took Ronan to a tree because there was a clown stuck in it. They tried to get a cat stuck there as well, just so he'd have some company, but the cat wouldn't co-operate.

"This is an interesting problem," Daisy said.

"It isn't a problem at all," Ronan said.

"He's stuck in the tree."

"It's a problem for him, but not for us. Let's just leave him there. He seems perfectly happy."

"That's just because he has a smile painted on his face," Graham said.

Daisy said to the clown, "Why did you climb the tree?"

"Because a magician put a spell on me," the clown said. "He doesn't like me because he thinks I stole his act. My act is basically just being afraid of earthworms. I see an earthworm and I act as if I'm terrified. Earthworms are inherently funny. No one would laugh if I used a beetle. I know because I've tried. Although I did have to kill the beetle. It wouldn't be funny if I had to kill the earthworms. I have earthworms in a jam jar and I say, 'I think I need some jam for my sandwich.' The kids can see that there are earthworms in the jar, but I pretend to be oblivious to this. So I open the jar expecting to find jam and then I start screaming, and the kids love it. I do a magic trick where I try to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I pull earthworms out instead, and then I start screaming. The magician said I stole this idea from him, but I didn't. He put a spell on me. He said I'd be attacked by dogs. I thought this was just nonsense, but then I noticed that dogs were looking at me in a funny way, and then when one of them started growling I realised that he really had put the spell on me, so I climbed the tree to get away from the dogs."

"Have you tried talking to the magician?" Graham said.

"He wouldn't listen to me. His career hasn't been going so well lately, and mine is just taking off. I just got my own TV show. He resents my success. He hardly ever leaves his house, and I know because I can see the house from here. He lives above that shed." The clown pointed towards a shed nearby. A two-room wooden house had been built on its roof. "I saw him climb the ladder to his house yesterday and he hasn't come out since."

"Well then he probably wouldn't need his ladder," Ronan said. "I'm going to get the ladder and bring it here, and you're going to come down because this is all complete nonsense. If he really could make dogs attack you, his career wouldn't be going so badly. He'd be the most successful magician in the world. Or at the very least he'd be the world's most successful dog trainer."

Ronan got the ladder and brought it to the tree, but the clown still refused to come down.

Ronan tried to convince Daisy and Graham to leave the clown there. He said, "Even the worst TV show would be better than this. If it was TV he'd fall out of the tree, or he'd have been shot into the tree by a canon. And someone would throw a pineapple at him."

Daisy and Graham were just about to give up on the clown when they heard the door of the magician's house opening. They saw the magician put his foot down, expecting to find the ladder, but he stood on air and fell to the ground. He got to his feet, but he looked dazed. Ronan, Daisy and Graham made their getaway before he figured out who was responsible for the missing ladder. He'd surely put a spell on them if he knew what they did.

They ran into a field. They saw a huge cardboard box in the field, so they hid under that. There was a much smaller box underneath it, and there was a candle on top of the smaller box. Ronan lit the candle and looked under the small box. He found a tunnel. They took the candle with them when they went down into the tunnel. They met a woman who whispered, "Follow me."

She led them to a room where a man with a red nose was sitting on a stool next to an up-turned wooden box. He smiled broadly when he saw them, but he remained silent. He was holding a plastic knife and fork in his hands. There were salt and pepper cellars on the box, but no dinner. The woman pointed to a sign on the wall that said 'The poet is supposed to bring the dinner'. And then she pointed to another sign on the opposite wall that said 'But the poet is pointing a pointy stick at a jazz band'.

She took ten signs out of a box, and she held each one up for Ronan, Daisy and Graham to read. The signs told the story of the people who live in the tunnels, and how in happier times they used to walk the city streets on hazy summer days. They waltzed through life and every time they threw a deck of cards in the air, the cards would gently float to the ground, but now they fall like shards of glass, so it's safer to stay underground. They spend their days making signs to explain everything. Sometimes they go outside at night.

"It's perfectly safe to go outside by day," Daisy said. "The chances of being attacked by a donkey or a dog are virtually nil. It would be more dangerous by night because you can't see what's falling on your head."

"And you can always hide in trees," Graham said. "You'll find that most trees have ladders next to them now. People are always getting attacked by dogs or donkeys, but neither dogs nor donkeys can climb ladders. And the playing cards would get stuck in the branches."

The woman spent a few minutes searching for a sign. She looked through a few boxes before she found the one she wanted. It said 'Maybe you're right'.

She got another sign that said 'We're going out now'. She took it with her when she walked away through a tunnel. She returned ten minutes later through another tunnel, and there were sixteen people behind her.

The magician was still dazed, but he had figured out that someone must have stolen his ladder, and he was intent on finding the culprits. When he saw the cardboard box in the field he tapped on the top of it with his wand and he said, "Hello. Is anyone there?"

To his surprise there was someone there. Daisy emerged from beneath the box, followed by Graham and then Ronan, and then the crowd of people who lived underground. The magician was shocked. He thought he had made all of these people appear.

Daisy, Graham and Ronan walked away quickly before he asked about the ladder, and the others followed them. The man with the red nose looked very nervous. When he heard a dog barking he was convinced he was just about to be attacked. He looked around for the nearest tree. Just as Graham had said, there were ladders up against trees. Or at least there was a ladder up against this one. He climbed it, but the clown wasn't happy about sharing his hiding place. He tried to push the newcomer out. A struggle ensued, which resulted in both of them falling to the ground. The magician had been staring at the tree at the time. When he saw two clowns fall out of it he assumed that he had made this happen as well. He was terrified. This meant that he really did have magic powers. He really did put the clown in danger of being attacked by dogs.

The magician helped the clown to his feet and said, "I'm terribly sorry about this whole dog thing. I'll lift the spell... Can you remember what I did to put the spell on you?"

"You just said there was a spell on me."

"Right. Well presumably I'll just have to say there isn't a spell on you. There isn't a spell on you."

"Thank you very much."

The clown looked around for the man with the red nose, but he was nowhere to be seen. He had returned to the tree, and so had all of the others who had emerged from the ground. There were eighteen of them in the tree. They were terrified of the magician because he looked just like the man who made the cards fall on them.

Ronan, Daisy and Graham had been watching the whole thing. "That was so much better than anything on TV," Daisy said.

"Admittedly," Ronan said, "that wouldn't have been any better even if someone had been hit with a pineapple."

The clown had an idea for his new TV show. The people who emerged from the ground would be in it. They'd dress up as earthworms and emerge from strange places to frighten him, and then the magician would arrive to save him. The earthworms would climb trees or hide in a phone booth or in a Mini. The clown would feel safe, but he'd forget about them after a few seconds and he'd say 'I have to make a phone call now', or 'Where did I put my car keys?'.

The moose's head over the fireplace was very pleased with Munster's victory in the Heineken Cup. It more than made up for Manchester United's victory in the Champions League final. The wife's uncle says that he once played rugby when he was posing as an English aristocrat. The fly-half on his team, who was the son of a Lord, got out a walking stick shortly after kick-off and he beat the opposing team's inside centre to a bloody pulp. They were able to laugh about it over drinks later. The centre was the best man at the fly-half's wedding on the following day.

The Owl

In theory the weather should be getting warmer at this time of year, but it's getting colder. The garden gnomes seem to be enjoying themselves anyway. My grandfather believed that they were drunk pretty much all of the time. It would explain why they keep falling over, and why one of them keeps making a pass at the ugly gnome with the hatchet.

My cousin Jessica did something to her hair and everyone kept looking at it, trying to figure out what she had done. A man called Freddie was wearing a big blue hat and he asked her if he could touch her hair but she said no. He told her she could touch his hat if she let him touch her hair, and even though she was tempted to touch his big blue hat she still said no. He tried to pretend to be indignant but he gave up after a few seconds and he sighed. "What's the use?" he said. "We're all doomed anyway."

She said, "If it means that much to you, you can touch my hair."

"What's the use? We're all doomed!"

"I thought that once, for a few hours, but then I met a woman who was able to demonstrate that we're not doomed at all. You should meet her too. Her name is Carol."

Jessica took Freddie to meet Carol. Carol's method for instilling a positive outlook was to write speeches that were very positive and life-affirming. She'd make people like Freddie deliver these speeches in public and they'd start believing what they're saying, even if the audience wouldn't. There didn't even have to be an audience. Carol would try to get to know the person first, and then she'd write a speech that would be appropriate for their personality, and the setting of the speech would vary from person to person as well. Her most recent client had delivered his speech to the swans in the park.

After getting to know Freddie she decided that he should deliver his speech from a rock in the middle of a field with a stuffed owl on his shoulder. Only Jessica and Carol were there to hear it. Freddie didn't think the speech would have any effect on him, and this was reflected in the tone of his voice when he began speaking from the rock. But as time went by he became more animated. As he approached the end of the speech his voice was full of life, but a gunshot provided an unexpected full stop. The owl fell from his shoulder, and some of its feathers floated to the ground after it.

The old Freddie would have said, "We're all doomed!" And he'd have told his audience that we're all little more than stuffed owls who've been shot in the past and are destined to be shot again. But the new Freddie just wanted revenge. "We're going to find out who did this," he said. "We're doing this for the owl."

The gunshot had come from the woods nearby. They went into the woods on a narrow, twisting path. Freddie brought the owl in a bag.

It didn't take them long to find a man with a shotgun. They watched as he remained completely still for over a minute, as if he was listening out for some sound, and then he shot into a tree. They heard him say 'Damn!', which suggested that he missed whatever he was trying to shoot. He walked on again, and they followed him.

When the path emerged from the woods it led to a gate at the back of a garden behind a cottage. The man opened the gate and walked up the garden path. Jessica, Freddie and Carol remained behind in the woods and they watched him open the door of the cottage and disappear inside.

"What are we going to do now?" Jessica said.

"I don't know," Carol said. "At least we know where he lives."

"That's right," Freddie said. "If you want revenge it always helps if you know where someone's car or someone's house is."

"What sort of revenge do you have in mind?" Jessica said.

"I haven't really thought about that."

They spent twenty minutes thinking about that. The sun had gone down, and there was a light on in the cottage. When the light went off they went around to the front and they saw the man walking away down a narrow lane.

They followed him. He went to a house a few hundred yards away. All of the lights were on here, and there were people with drinks outside.

Jessica, Freddie and Carol saw all this through the hedge at the front of the house. "It looks like a party," Jessica said. "I wonder if we could sneak in and not be noticed. There must be lots of ways to get revenge on a man when he's at a party."

"It would be difficult to remain unnoticed," Carol said.

They kept looking through the hedge until they heard footsteps behind them. They turned around and they saw a woman who was holding a bunch of flowers. She was going to the party too. They noticed that the flowers had grey petals. They were attracted to the flowers like moths to light. They felt they had to go inside, so they followed the woman in.

They did their best to blend in with the crowd, and no one seemed to notice them. Freddie wanted to put the owl on his shoulder because he felt it was the owl's rightful place, but they managed to convince him to keep it in the bag.

The grey flowers were in a vase in the centre of a table. They seemed real. The woman who brought the flowers saw Jessica, Freddie and Carol looking at the grey petals. She went over to them and said, "The flowers came from my garden. The cook found them. She once had a habit of covering her ears when you wanted to talk to her. If you said you wanted to talk to her about grasshoppers she'd listen attentively. But you'd have to get in quick with the mention of grasshoppers before she covered her ears. You'd say, 'Grasshoppers, Janie. It's about grasshoppers.' And then you'd say whatever you wanted to say to her and add in something about grasshoppers at the end. One day I asked her to go outside and stand next to the glasshouse because there was something wrong with the cat. He was walking across the roof but he looked unsteady. So she waited at the side of the glasshouse in case he fell. While she was there the man who represented the gardener arrived with a list of all the things wrong with the garden. The gardener was too upset to deliver it himself. He was upset because the list was so long, and the list was so long because he was upset. Every week the list got longer and he got more upset. He was too upset to do anything about the garden. He felt he was powerless to solve anything. The weeds would always make a comeback. The grass would need to be cut again. He was certainly powerless to do anything about some of the items on the list, like world hunger, which didn't have much to do with the garden. The vegetable patch wouldn't put much of a dent in that problem. The man who represented the gardener didn't really care who he delivered the list to, so he read it out to the cook at the glasshouse. She covered her ears for most of the list, and she didn't notice that the cat had fallen. He fell down the other side of the roof and he landed in a bucket of water. When she realised what had happened she took the cat out and dried him. When I went out later I saw her dancing with the cat. She's been a changed person since she saved the cat's life, or one of his lives. She never covered her ears again. She plays hide-and-seek with him in the garden. There are lots of places to hide now that it's so overgrown. She found these grey flowers when she was looking for the cat one day. I like the garden the way it is now. It's worth paying the gardener to do nothing to it."

Freddie pictured the cat playing in the garden. He thought of the stuffed owl in the bag and he said, "We're doomed. Doomed!"

"The concert should cheer you up," the woman said.

"What concert?" Jessica said.

"We meet here every week for a concert. This house is being haunted by a ghost who makes a vain attempt to sing every night. If he was a tenor when he was alive he didn't retain this ability after death, but it doesn't stop him trying. Edith, the owner of the house, has an aunt who can frighten ghosts by acting strangely. She does something with her knitting needles and a cushion and the words 'Where's Archie?' that would make you back away. So Edith brought her aunt to the house to frighten the ghost, but her aunt loved the sound of the ghost's voice, and she started singing along. They sing duets once a week now, and it's strangely entertaining."

The ghost arrived at midnight. He entered the room through the wall. He took up his place by the fireplace and his arrival was greeted with a round of applause. Edith's aunt stood at the other side of the fireplace, and they began their song. Jessica thought it was certainly strange, but not very entertaining. Freddie looked as if he wasn't enjoying it much either.

Near the end of the song he was distracted by something moving at his feet. He looked down at the bag and he noticed that the owl was moving around in it. He opened the bag and the owl flew out. The song came to an abrupt end. The man who had shot the owl dropped his glass when he saw the bird. The owl perched on the back of a chair and stared at him. He vowed never to shoot another living creature again.

Freddie was smiling. It looked as if the positive Freddie had been restored. He opened a window to let the owl fly away. When the owl had gone the ghost and Edith's aunt started singing again.

Jessica said to Freddie, "Do you want to touch my hair now?"

"Yeah, alright," he said.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the Champions League final this evening and to the Heineken Cup final on Saturday. He doesn't need alcohol to enhance his appreciation of these events, or of any event, and he doesn't have to worry about falling over and making a pass at something with a hatchet. When we have parties he prefers to remain above the alcohol-inspired misbehaviour beneath him. I've often woken up on the floor and looked up at his disapproving glare. It's a horrible feeling. After the last time I vowed never to let it happen again, so I always go to sleep with a blindfold now.

German

The weeds would take over the garden if you let them. There's a good case to be made for letting them. You wouldn't have to spend so much time pulling weeds out of the ground. But I keep imagining what my grandmother and great-grandmother would say if I let the weeds win. They wouldn't need to say anything -- they'd just have to look at me. When I was young my grandmother would give me a penny for spending an afternoon pulling weeds. People used to say she was a miser, but she preferred to think of herself as a coin collector.

My cousin Albert often went to the pub with his friends, George and Neil. A German man used to play the accordion there every Friday evening, and for some reason it proved the be an extremely effective way of seducing women. The women would surround him when he went to the bar after finishing his set.

Albert was convinced that the accordion had a German accent, and that this was what the women were attracted to. George and Neil listened very closely, but they couldn't hear the accent. Albert insisted he wasn't imagining it. "I play the accordion myself," he said. "Even if I didn't know that the player was German, I'd be able to tell that it was a German accordion just by listening to it. The women hear the accordion talking to them in a German accent."

"Why don't you demonstrate what an accordion would sound like when it speaks in an Irish accent," George said.

"Alright then. I'll play here tomorrow evening. I'll use it to 'talk' to Yvonne. I always get nervous when I actually talk to her, but maybe in music I'll be able to say the things I've failed to say in words."

There was definitely a different accent to Albert's accordion. No one knew for sure what he was saying, but they could guess because of the way he was looking at Yvonne as he played. She was at the bar with her friend, Ciara. She said to Ciara, "Is he trying to say something about taking me back to his caravan?"

"It's quite possible," Ciara said.

When Albert finished playing he went over to her. He said 'hi', but she slapped him across the face and said, "I'll never be drunk enough."

She walked away. Ciara explained to him that Yvonne had interpreted the music as an invitation to go back to his caravan and to do something when she's drunk enough.

George and Neil thought he'd been saying something similar to Yvonne. "I don't even have a caravan," Albert said to them. "That says a lot about her image of me if she thinks I'm the sort of man who gets women drunk and takes them back to my caravan."

"You would be that sort of man if you had a caravan," Neil said.

"You could change your image," George said.

"That would take too much time and effort."

"Maybe the Irish accent was too strong," Neil said.

"Yeah, I never thought of that. It's the accent that puts her off, and I wouldn't blame her. I should try to play with a German accent."

"My cousin Paul is obsessed with the German language," George said. "He could certainly teach you a thing or two."

They went to see Paul on the following day. He told them he first became interested in German when he saw a woman dancing in German. He became captivated by her, and he fell in love the language. He loved the sound of the words, even though he didn't understand them. His love of the language didn't diminish when he learnt it.

Neil said, "I always notice the 'man' in German when I hear German women speak."

"Claudia Schiffer is German," Paul said. "Does she make you think of men?"

"No."

"When I took up writing, German seemed like my natural language. I decided to use a typewriter because I thought the sound of it would be appropriate for German. All typewriters have German accents, and I bought mine in Germany, so the accent is very strong."

"I always thought Irish dancing sounded like a typewriter," George said.

"I suppose there is a a hint of German in Irish dancing."

"What about traditional Irish music?"

"I've written a film script in German about a traditional Irish band."

"I used to play in a trad band," Albert said. "We often played in a club called Trad Pit. It was really more of a hole than a pit. It was a bit seedy."

"It obviously still has an influence on your music," George said. "You developed your accent there. That's why Yvonne thought you wanted to take her to a caravan."

"I could type in German and you can play along," Paul said. "Maybe that way you'll take on some of the German accent."

Albert spent an hour playing the accordion, accompanying Paul as he typed. George spent the time reading through an English version of the script. Paul got someone else to translate it from German into English. George guessed that something had been lost in the translation. Phrases like 'Can you please diminish my cake' just didn't sound right.

They returned on the following evening and Albert played again while Paul typed. Albert thought he was playing with a different accent, and he felt ready to play for Yvonne again.

But he didn't have any more success the second time around. This time she threw a drink in his face and she said, "You can tell the lumberjack he's an idiot."

George showed Albert a line in the script where a character called Hans said 'If your legs could be used by a lumberjack, the lumberjack would think they belonged to the rector'.

"I got the impression you said that to her," George said.

"Mabye I need to use a different instrument," Albert said.

"Why don't you sing to her?" Neil said. "Serenade her. She can't be confused about what you're saying if you say it in song."

"Yeah, but I can't sing."

"You can whistle," George said. "Why not join The Whistlers?"

"That's not a bad idea."

The Whistlers were a club that met three times a week to practice their own whistling language, which was a bit like bird song. They met in an orchard, and their meetings were conducted entirely in whistles. One of the members wanted to sing like Cyndi Lauper as well as whistle, but the others wouldn't let her even whistle a Cyndi Lauper song. She said that the president got to whistle the theme tune to Hill Street Blues, and the others told her she should start a Cyndi Lauper club if she had a problem with the president's whistling.

So she did start a Cyndi Lauper club. About half of The Whistlers joined her in the new club. A lot of them left because they could express so many more things in song. One of them left because he had wanted to whistle the word 'subliminate' but the motion was rejected. They'd also meet in the orchard, and they'd sing Cyndi Lauper songs for hours. The Whistlers told them (by whistling) that they were effectively a choir, but the Cyndi Lauper club whistled as well. Tensions between the two groups grew when The Whistlers started throwing apples at the Cyndi Lauper Club. The Cyndi Lauper Club responded by handing out copies of The Whistlers' guidebook to their language. All Whistlers had to sign an agreement saying they'd never reveal their language to non-Whistlers. But the Cyndi Lauper club made changes to the original guidebook. In the original you'd find a whistle that represented the word 'piano', but according to the altered version, this whistle represented 'hedgehog'.

Albert joined The Whistlers and he spent a month learning their language before he felt confident enough to use it on Yvonne. When he saw her walking through the park with Ciara one evening he performed a series of whistles he'd practised in advance. She had one of the guidebooks created by the Cyndi Lauper club, so she was able to translate what he whistled.

When he finished whistling she walked over to him. She punched him in the stomach and she walked away. Before Ciara followed her, she whispered these words in Albert's ear: "I have a nurse's uniform at home. Come to my house at eleven o' clock."

The moose's head over the fireplace didn't look pleased when Manchester United won the Premier League on Sunday. Seeing Chelsea win would have been only slightly better. There isn't much to get excited about when the best you can hope for is that the lesser of two evils will win. They'll be playing each other in the Champions League final as well. It's a pity one of them has to win. The wife's uncle is supporting Man U because of a bad memory associated with Chelsea. He once met a woman in a bar in Chelsea and she agreed to go out on a date with him. She was wearing a wedding dress when she turned up for the date and this freaked him out. He wasn't wearing anything.

Going Gong

Summer is definitely in the air. The leaves are appearing on the trees again. The lawns are like carpets after they've been cut. My great-grandmother loved to see the garden like this, and she hated the thought of someone putting a foot in the wrong place and ruining everything. The way I look at it, if you put a foot in the wrong place you can only ruin everything beneath your foot, but she was a perfectionist. She used to tell visitors that she'd hidden snares around the garden, just to make sure they'd be careful about what they did with their feet.

My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, once went to a museum in an old manor house. After spending an hour looking at the exhibits they took a walk around the garden, but they couldn't help noticing that the gardener was keeping a very close eye on them. He was obviously very protective of his creation. Jane tried to put his mind at ease by complimenting his work. She thought this would be a way of letting him know that they weren't there to vandalise his creation, but he seemed to take it the wrong way. He said, "If either of ye go blinko, ye'll regret it. I'll make sure ye'll regret it."

They decided to leave the garden and return to the museum. On the way back, Claudia said to Jane, "What does going blinko mean?"

"I have no idea. We should ask my uncle Harry. He often comes up with strange words and phrases, and he uses them as if they're the sort of things everyone should know."

They went to see Harry and they asked him about going blinko. He said, "It sounds familiar alright. I think it's more-or-less the same thing as going gong while your cheese is in the parlour."

"What does it mean to be going gong while your cheese is in the parlour."

"Ah, now. Now there's a question. You'll have to ask Clinky about that. Only don't call him Clinky. Call him Owen."

They went to see Owen, who lived nearby. Jane asked him about going gong while your cheese is in the parlour. He said, "To understand that you need to familiarise yourself with a woman called Rebecca. She's always hiding in the shadows and observing people. She has a way of making herself invisible. I've found her in the most unlikely places and there must have been countless times when I didn't spot her at all.

"One afternoon I was sitting at my typewriter, working on my memoirs. I was writing about driving across the desert in an old car, and I couldn't remember if I'd actually done this or just written about it in the past. I got up and I walked to the wall. I climbed a ladder to a wooden platform ten feet above the ground. From there I climbed another ladder to another platform. This one was three feet beneath the ceiling, so I had to crouch. I went to the corner of the room and I opened a small door. I took out a bottle of brandy and I poured myself a glass.

"A few days later I was reading the newspaper in the same room. I always read a column by a woman called Brigitte. On that morning I came across something very familiar in it. She wrote about a man who climbed a ladder to a platform, and then climbed another, and then poured himself a brandy. I wondered if Rebecca had been hiding in the shadows, and if she was really Brigitte. It was also possible that someone else was living in the house. There are lots of small doors and passageways in the place. A man got lost here once and we didn't find him for three years.

"To determine if Rebecca was writing the column I decided to spend a day with her, and to fill that day with as much adventure as possible. If she was the writer then surely some of the day's events would make it into her column.

"I used to wear blue shoes then. I bought them in a shoe shop from a man who wore a top hat. When I told people about this they always wanted to know more because not every shoe shop worker wore a top hat. In fact, very few of them did. This man claimed he was over 150 years old, but he didn't look a day over fifty. He said it was a very long day. He hadn't slept since 1904. He once had a wife, but she went away and she never came back. She sent him a postcard from where she went to. She said she was enjoying herself but she didn't like the plants because they were all so big and green, and they all looked as if they'd try to eat you if you let your guard down. So she never let her guard down, and she hadn't slept in months. She was planning to give up sleeping for good, so she could still be alive too, for all he knew.

"So I decided to go looking for his wife and I asked Rebecca to come along. I knew where she went to because of the postmark on the postcard. And I thought it should be easy enough to find her there because her dress sense would be stuck in the past.

"As we approached the place I warned Rebecca to be wary of the plants that could consume the unsuspecting. We noticed that the trees and wild flowers and bushes and ditches seemed different. The trees were thicker, leaving less sunlight through, and they seemed to be leaning over the roads and paths. We got the impression that some of the flowers weren't rising towards the sun, but instead were moving to the music of a snake-charmer.

"We came to a small town that was full of old-style shops and pubs. Everyone looked as if they hadn't caught any new fashion viruses since before the second World War. I asked a man if he knew of a woman who didn't sleep, and I was pointed towards the haberdashery.

"So we went there, and the woman behind the counter wore a dress that seemed to pre-date the first World War. I asked her if she knew a man who worked in a shoe shop. She kept looking at the plants all around her as she said, 'He compared my mother to a man with a hole in his head.' I said, 'That isn't really my area of expertise, but if you went back to him you could get away from the plants.' She said, 'I could just as easily get rid of the plants. But they keep me awake.' I said that wouldn't really be my area of expertise either. She asked if there was any way she could help me in her position as a haberdasher? I told her I was just looking for a bit of adventure, something to fill my day with Rebecca. She said she might be able to help.

"She took us down a path that led from the garden at the back of the shop. It led us to a man who held a small telescope. Butterflies were flying around his head, and he seemed to be observing them, or trying to observe them, with the telescope. When she introduced him to us he pointed the telescope in our direction. I waved into it. She said to him, 'I remember you said you needed someone to help you with those things that try to steal your iron roof every night. I think Owen and Rebecca would be just right for the job.'

"I didn't like the sound of 'things'. The man lived in a white wooden house. It was three storeys high, with two rooms on each floor. He had put an iron roof on it because he loved the sound of the rain on the iron. But over the previous year people had been trying to steal his roof every night. The only thing that proved an effective deterrent was shooting into the roof, but that had the unwelcome side-effect of filling the roof with holes. Instead of shooting he threw stones at the roof, but he had to throw a lot of them before they'd eventually go away.

"I asked him why he doesn't wait outside at night and try to catch them. He said he had to be asleep by ten o' clock each night because the plants seemed to be getting bigger during the day, and at that time they'd be so big they'd try to take him on, but they never touch him when he's asleep. The people on the roof would wake him up in the middle of the night. Myself and Rebecca agreed to wait in the shed behind the house that night and we'd look out for those people.

"At two o' clock in the morning we saw six little people climb a tree and jump onto the roof, but they showed no intention of taking it. They only wanted to dance. I couldn't help smiling and tapping my feet. It was more entertaining than anything Michael Flattley had done.

"A Renaissance painter lived nearby. He hadn't been around since the Renaissance -- Renaissance painting was just a profession handed down from father to son, and it only went back as far as his grandfather. He paid people to pose for his paintings each evening. After hours of standing still they'd explode into life. They needed to climb trees and dance, and the house with the iron roof provided an opportunity to do both.

"When the owner of the house found out that they were really there to dance he was delighted. He heard the sound in his sleep, and it filled his dreams with Renaissance art.

"A few days later I had proof that Rebecca was Brigitte. She did use an event from that day in her column. She told her readers about a dog who followed me for two miles. There was something about my smell that made him happy.

"With regard to going gong while your cheese is in the parlour, the man who owned the house told us that when he believed the dancers were trying to steal his roof, every time he thought about them he'd hear the sound in his head, and it seemed as if his head was a gong. He'd have to eat some cheese in his parlour just to calm down. Going gong while your cheese is in the parlour means getting angry about something and immediately trying to calm down because you don't want to get angry about this thing."

"What does that have to do with going blinko?" Jane said.

"Who said it had anything to do with going blinko?"

"Uncle Harry."

"It has absolutely nothing to do with going blinko."

"What does going blinko mean?" Claudia said.

"I have no idea, but the gardener at the museum might. He's a bit of a horse-pop, but he seems to have a good knowledge of these expressions."

So Jane and Claudia went back to the gardener and they asked him what going blinko means.

"I don't know," he said. "It's just something my grandfather used to say."

"What did you mean when you said it?" Claudia said.

"I meant 'Don't do anything ye shouldn't do'. Like stand on the flowers or steal my wheelbarrow."

"That's outrageous," Jane said. "We had no intention of doing either of those things."

"People are always standing on the flowers or stealing my wheelbarrow. It's safer to point these things out."

"Do we look like flower stampers or wheelbarrow thieves?" Claudia said.

The gardener looked closely at both of them before saying, "I really can't say."

Jane and Claudia were certainly going gong and they had no intention of eating cheese in the parlour to calm down. They came back later and they stole his wheelbarrow instead.

The moose's head over the fireplace would have experienced my great-grandmother's perfectionism. She dusted his antlers every day. I dust his antlers every day as well, but only because he seems to enjoy it. The wife's uncle says he used to go out with a woman who brushed his hair every day because she enjoyed it. She used to buy clothes for him too. When he met her father for the first time they were both surprised by how similar they looked. He tried to get out of the relationship by telling her he liked wearing dresses, but she just bought him a dress. It was a lot like one her mother wore.