Pogo

Heavy rain and strong winds. It feels like summer at last. The forecasters say it'll be like this for the next week, and yet the sun seems to be shining all the time at Wimbledon. When I was young my grandfather told me that when he was young it used to rain from May until September. They tied a piece of string around a tennis ball and they suspended it from a tree just to remind themselves of what the sun looked like.

My uncle Ben often went to see a friend of his called Davey who lived in an old farmhouse with his younger brother, Noel. Davey spoke in a loud voice. He believed that statements weren't worth stating unless they were loud enough to make birds fly from trees and frighten small children. Noel was very quiet. Sometimes Ben would listen carefully and he'd hear Noel say things like, "If the past tense of 'know' is 'knew', and 'throw' is 'threw', then shouldn't 'show' be 'shew'? I shew my shoe to the woman who said I'd die by getting my ear caught in something." To Ben, statements like these were a sure sign of intelligence. He also regarded being able to open cans as a sign of intelligence.

When Ben called around to their house one day Davey was stuck to his shoes. You could tell because he kept saying, "I'm stuck to my shoes! To my shoes!" People for miles around could hear him.

He didn't say that his shoes were stuck to him because he believed his shoes had more personality than him. They were the dominant character in the relationship. If they could have spoken they'd have said, "Who's that man who's stuck to us?"

If his shoes had been stuck to his feet it wouldn't have been a problem. He could have gone on like this for weeks without even noticing. But each shoe was stuck to the back of his trousers. He woke up that way in the morning. Someone must have glued the shoes to his trousers during the night, and he couldn't remove them without tearing his trousers.

Ben put some thought into the problem, but to no avail. He suggested going to the pub at the bottom of the hill, an old building that looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Someone there might be able to solve the problem, someone like The Worm. The Worm was one of Davey's cousins. He spent most of his days in the pub, talking about Pleasantville. His conception of Pleasantville was of a place where nothing bad ever happened, and people had no fear of something bad just around the corner. Someone called 'The Worm' would never be allowed to live in a place like Pleasantville, and he had no desire to live there because every now and then he felt a need to make something bad happen. But the town was an important feature of the geography in his mind. He added to the geography of the town every time he spoke about it.

When Ben and Davey arrived in the pub, The Worm was talking about how all of the birds in Pleasantville are puppets on strings, but no one ever wonders who's pulling the strings. Davey explained the problem he was having with the shoes. "I've thought about getting dogs to bite the shoes off," Davey said, "but I'm worried that the shoes will get dogs to bite me off. I'd taste nicer than the shoes. This is one of the few areas in which I'd be superior to them."

"If this was in Pleasantville," the Worm said, "the shoes would remove themselves voluntarily. They'd walk away apologetically and park themselves in a dark corner. Dogs would only bite the shoes of criminals, and then be rewarded by the police. The pubs in Pleasantville would only have entertaining drunks."

There was silence in the pub when The Worm stopped talking. The place was full of un-entertaining drunks. It was the perfect place to be if you didn't like people and you couldn't stand being on your own. Most of the drinkers only barely qualified as people, and only one or two could stand on their own.

"The robots in Pleasantville will eventually leave the place and take us all away," The Worm said when the silence became too oppressive. He didn't know where the robots would take us to. He was working on ways of ingratiating himself to them.

The atmosphere of the pub was starting to depress Ben, and Davey was giving up hope of ever seeing his shoes in front of him again, unless he wore his trousers back to front. Whenever they became depressed and their souls cried out for something uplifting, instead of turning to art or nature they just went to see Pogo. Pogo spent hours jumping up and down on his pogo stick every evening. He travelled all the local roads on it. They found his love of life uplifting. If they could have seen a woman on a pogo stick it would have been as uplifting as a choir on pogo sticks singing Ode to Joy, but they had to settle for Pogo. People went to see him for all sorts of reasons. When the bar man in another pub invented a new cocktail he needed a way of shaking it. Pogo let him climb on his back while he jumped up and down. The bar man held the cocktail shaker while he was attached to Pogo's back. He found the experience so uplifting that he started crying.

Ben and Davey spent twenty minutes looking at Pogo jumping up and down on a narrow road. They would have kept looking at him until it got dark, but Ben had a brilliant idea. He said to Davey, "Why don't you climb on Pogo's back while he's jumping up and down, and maybe the shoes will fall off."

Pogo agreed to let Davey on his back. The sight of them on the pogo stick was entertaining, but it didn't loosen the shoes. Ben got a shock when he heard Noel say, "I have a better plan."

Noel had been with them all along, but Ben hadn't noticed him. Pogo hadn't noticed him either. He lost his concentration when he heard Noel's voice. He fell off with Davey, and the pogo stick flew up in the air. It landed on Noel's head. The blow to the head seemed to affect him. Ben asked him what his plan was but he just muttered something about the robots.

Davey's problem had got worse. When he was getting a piggy-back ride on Pogo, Pogo was holding the backs of Davey's legs, where the shoes were stuck. There was glue on the shoes, and Pogo's hands got stuck to them. He couldn't free himself from Davey. The two of them were rolling around on the ground. Noel was too dazed to do anything about it so it was down to Ben to solve the problem, and he came up with a brilliant idea. He said to Pogo, "Davey was just telling me how much he loves your eyes."

Pogo was horrified. He struggled to get free from Davey, but he only managed it by pulling off Davey's trousers. He was even more horrified when he realised what he'd done. He ran away from the trousers but the trousers followed him. Davey ran after his shoes and his trousers. "That was my idea," Noel said.

Pogo was chased around a field by the trousers and by Davey for over an hour. All the drinkers in the pub came out to see it because they heard Davey shouting. The heat and the sweat on Pogo's hands eventually loosened the grip of the glue, so the shoes and trousers fell off. This gave Davey an idea for removing the shoes from his trousers. It was something he'd never have thought of doing: washing his trousers in warm water.

The moose's head over the fireplace once had a woman's shoe stuck in his antlers on the morning after a party. A lot of people tried it on, but we never found out who owned it. The wife's uncle says he has a collection of shoes that women threw at him from upstairs windows as he ran from their houses. Each shoe is associated with a happy memory. He didn't collect the things that the husbands threw at him, although he did hold onto the bullet that became lodged in the bible in his back pocket. The bible belonged to the woman he'd just been with. It was on her kitchen table. He put it in his pocket so she wouldn't feel guilty about what they were doing.

Emeric Thornburke

There are some old bee hives behind the orchard. My grandfather took up beekeeping after meeting a beekeeper who told him everything he knew about bees. This conversation lasted several months, although there were several interruptions, such as when my grandfather had to help someone lift a Shetland pony. This interruption lasted several months. He didn't spend all of this time lifting a Shetland pony. There were several interruptions, such as when he had to teach the dog how to stop eating the wheelbarrow. He lost interest in bees after a few weeks. They weren't as interesting as dogs because you couldn't teach them tricks and they weren't as much fun as Shetland ponies because you couldn't lift them.

My cousin Jessica is an art teacher. One of her friends, Jonathon, became an art critic after the editor of a newspaper overheard him talking about a painting in a pub one evening. He was very articulate in his descriptions of just how bad the painting was. He said of the artist, "There's a thing he does with his hand and a paint brush, and on the surface it might look like he's creating art but I think he's trying to communicate with his alien brethren on the mother ship."

The editor was looking for a new art critic and he offered the job to Jonathon, despite the latter's admission that he knew nothing about art. The editor wasn't in the slightest bit concerned about this, and his faith in Jonathon was rewarded. Jonathon became a very successful art critic. His immersion in the art world changed him as a person. He started developing affectations. When Jessica would call to see him in the evenings he'd lean against the mantelpiece with a glass of brandy in his hand. He'd be wearing a grey suit and white shoes. The laces were always undone.

She was angry with him for criticising artists when he had no idea what he was talking about. When she put this point to him he said, "It's not about what you know. It could be about pigs or cushions or Christianity. It could be about almost anything, but it's not about what you know."

"If you knew anything you'd know what it's about and you'd know that it is about what you know."

"That's a very authoritarian approach to art."

"Your approach is to trash everything you see."

"I trash about ninety-five percent of what I see because ninety-five percent of what I see is rubbish. You've got to be able to get rid of the rubbish if you want to see the gems more clearly. I always give praise where it's due."

It was true that he did give praise to certain artists, but Jessica didn't think he could ever recognise where it was due. To prove her point she invented an artist called Emeric Thornburke. She created Emeric's paintings herself. She thought Jonathon would like them because they were the sort of thing he had praised in the past. She knew someone who ran a gallery, and she was able to get some of Emeric's paintings included in an exhibition.

Jonathon liked the paintings when he saw them, and he decided he loved them after hearing the artist's life story. Emeric used to be an alcoholic, and he tried to burn every work he created before he was twenty-two. This is how he ended up in prison. Some of the paintings he burnt were in other people's houses. They had been sold for a lot of money.

Jonathon wrote very enthusiastically about Emeric's work. He said it made the other paintings seem as if they had been created by people hiding under blankets. People wanted to see more of Emeric's work. It took Jessica three hours to create another ten paintings. Her friend who ran the gallery agreed to show the paintings in an exhibition along with the art of a man who called himself Crunchy.

When Jessica was at her cousin Gary's birthday party in a pub one evening she overheard Gary's friend, Leonard, talk about a woman he met. Her name was Caroline. "She smiled at me," Leonard said. "I wondered if there was something about my presence that made her smile at me, but normally my presence is enough to make attractive young women take their presence elsewhere. She's a flautist, she told me. She's been playing the flute since she was ten. It was something her parents made her do, and she always saw it as an educational activity that she had to endure, like learning Irish all through primary school and secondary school. She used to play a lot of traditional Irish music, but she was more into pop music then. Later in her teens she started listening to indie music. She said it was the soundtrack to her life. I can picture her, hanging out with the cool kids. She has the looks to be part of the cool set. She'd have pity for the genetically impoverished un-cool crowd, people like me. The only criticism she could possibly have for her own genes were that they were making her parents tell her to learn the flute. But that wasn't really the genes' fault. They had come together in her and had a meeting, and decided that the flute was for the people with space-telescope glasses and satellite dish ears. Those genes could never have that meeting in her parents. She's a better expression of the union of her parents than anything they could do, although in many ways she was something that was done by her parents. She probably wouldn't want to think about that for very long.

"But anyway, she was telling me about learning the flute and how she hated it until she was eighteen, when she finally felt ready to tell her parents that she had no interest in the flute, but then she realised that traditional Irish music was actually cool, and she's loved playing the flute ever since then. She used to think of traditional musicians as people who had something wrong with their legs. It turned out that a lot of musicians were very much like her. She plays in a trad band with people just like her, the cool set, the ones who listened to all the right indie music in their teens, and probably still listen to it. It opened up a whole new aspect to Irish culture that she was blind to. She only wishes she could speak Irish as well.

"She spent half an hour telling me about playing the flute, and then she asked me what I do. I thought that if I told her I was studying civil engineering she'd make her excuses and leave, so I told her I was an artist. I thought she'd be fascinated by this, and she was. She asked me all sorts of questions about it. I was able to satisfy her curiosity with vague answers and the claim that it was impossible to explain my art in words, and that if I could describe it in words I wouldn't feel the need to create works of art -- I'd just use the words instead. She wanted to meet me again, which is good, but I can't keep up this pretence of being an artist for very long, which is bad."

"I have the perfect solution," Jessica said to him. "I've invented an artist called Emeric Thornburke to fool a critic. Emeric has been given an exhibition with another artist. I was going to come up with some excuse why Emeric couldn't make it, but you could pretend to be him. When I reveal the truth you can tell this woman that you were in on this all along, and that you told her you were an artist because you were so immersed in the role."

"Could I bring Caroline to the exhibition?"

"Of course you can."

Leonard smiled. "This might just work," he said.

He started to wonder about the wisdom of the plan shortly after arriving at the gallery with Caroline. He struggled to keep up the pretence because he was nothing like Emeric, and he hated the paintings, especially the one of the cat who was addicted to cough syrup.

Jonathon was delighted to meet him. He asked a lot of questions about Emeric's paintings. Leonard tried to keep the answers as short as possible, but even a simple 'yes' or 'no' could be awkward, like when Jonathon asked him, "Does this painting relate to the time you ate a falcon?"

Jessica hadn't said a word about eating a falcon. Leonard looked at her and she nodded. "Yes," he said. Caroline struggled to look him in the eye after this.

Leonard wanted Jessica to reveal the truth about Emeric, but she said, "Someone just offered four-thousand euros for Sore Kitty."

"You can't seriously be considering taking their money."

"You can have half of it."

"I don't want any of it. It would be immoral to sell any of these paintings."

"Would it? Would it really? When it comes down to it is it really moral to sell any work of art? And isn't there an element of illusion around every work of art? Isn't the illusion I've created part of the art?"

Leonard's answer was 'no', but he knew it wouldn't have any effect on Jessica. He started telling people that he may well burn the paintings in their houses if they bought any of his works. He thought they'd lose interest, but they only started bidding more.

When he saw Jonathon talking to Caroline his heart sank. She was laughing at something he said. Leonard had never made her laugh like that. He got a glass of wine and he drank it in one go. When people saw that Emeric was drinking again they were even more desperate to buy his paintings.

After a few drinks Leonard saw that there was only one way out. He got a cigarette lighter and he tried to burn the painting of the cat. Someone put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher, and people gathered around the remains of the painting. Someone said, "I'll pay twenty-thousand for it."

Someone else said, "Twenty-one-thousand."

"It's all a lie," Leonard said. "I'm not really an artist. I'm studying civil engineering. Emeric Thornburke doesn't exist. He was created to fool an art critic, to fool all of ye. Ye're all fools."

There was complete silence in the gallery, until someone said, "Twenty-two-thousand."

Leonard couldn't believe they were still willing to pay for a partially burnt painting of an addict cat that had been created as part of a scam, but he realised it would no longer be immoral to take their money now that they knew the truth. And Jessica had promised him half of it.

He still had the cigarette lighter. He started setting the other paintings on fire. The woman who ran the gallery followed him around with the fire extinguisher.

Unfortunately he didn't know which paintings had been created by Emeric and which had been created by Crunchy, the other artist in the exhibition. He set two of Crunchy's paintings on fire. He realised his mistake when Crunchy punched him, and almost simultaneously he forgot where he was.

When he regained consciousness a few minutes later he saw Caroline above him. She seemed to be very concerned about his well-being. The sight of her made him lose all interest in the money, which was just as well, because Crunchy demanded all of the money they made from the sale of Emeric's paintings to compensate for the destruction of his own works. Crunchy really had been in prison, and it was difficult to say no to him.

Jessica was disappointed to lose the money, but at least she had been successful in making a fool of Jonathon. He barely mentioned Emeric in his review of the exhibition, but he was full of praise for Crunchy, mainly because Crunchy had threatened him with a crowbar.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the soccer on TV. He still hasn't predicted who's going to win the tournament. Even the wife's aunt is taking an interest in it, mainly because it's a chance for her to practise her hobby of coming up with her own saint's days. Only she recognises Saint Sunderillpot, the patron saint of aunts. While watching the soccer she came up with Saint Rapcrowboy, the patron saint of referees. He's also the patron saint of the weather.

State of Affairs

It's a perfect time of year to be out in the garden, but most people stay indoors in case they melt. A lot of the neighbours only go out at night. The cover of darkness gives them the freedom to behave as strangely as they want. This would explain why I found a doll with a turnip for a head in a field yesterday. I don't think I want to find a fuller explanation for this.

My cousin Craig woke up one morning and he noticed that a cat was looking at him, so he looked at the cat. This state of affairs lasted for over an hour. He was waiting for something to happen that would send this state of affairs rolling down the hill into another state of affairs. All it would take was a slight push. The phone provided that push when it rang. It was Heather. She asked him if he'd seen her cat. The answer was YES!!! but it was such a bright flashing yes that he didn't know how to say it. He remained silent for over twenty minutes. This state of affairs would have lasted much longer if another push hadn't come along. The doorbell rang. It was Joe, and he asked Craig if he'd been talking to Heather. At first Craig thought the answer would be 'yes', but this didn't seem appropriate because he had spent so much time not talking to her and very little time talking to her. On paper you'd need a magnifying glass to see this yes. If it was said you'd need very good hearing to hear it, and Joe didn't have very good hearing because once he didn't hear a goose creeping up behind him, and the goose was able to attack him. So Craig said nothing. This state of affairs persisted for over half an hour.

Joe broke the silence when he told Craig about how he had been walking by the river in the light of the moon. The woman next to him had suggested going to a party, and he told her he thought this was an excellent suggestion. So they went to the party in a house near the river. They drank and danced, and he couldn't remember falling asleep but he was sure it must have happened because he woke up lying on a floor in the house on the following morning.

When he woke there was a strange woman looking at him. "Hello, strange woman," he said. "Do you know where the woman next to me went to."

"I don't know," the strange woman said. "Have you tried looking next to you?"

"No. I haven't."

"Maybe you should."

"I will."

He looked next to him. There was a woman next to him but she wasn't the woman who had been next to him on the previous night.

"Is the woman next to you the woman who was next to you?" the strange woman said.

"The woman who is currently next to me is not the woman who was next to me last night. I intend to cease being the man next to the woman currently next to me before she wakes up."

He got up and he tip-toed out of the room. He found the woman who used to be next to him. She was asleep on an armchair. He made himself the man next to her by sitting on an armchair beside her.

When she woke he asked her if she'd do him the honour of being the woman opposite him in a cafe. She said she thought this was an excellent suggestion, so they went to a cafe for breakfast.

As Joe told this story to Craig he didn't realise that this woman who used to be next to him and opposite him was currently the woman behind him. She had walked up the garden path while he was telling the story and she heard everything.

Craig could see that this woman was Heather. She had come to ask Craig about the cat, having failed to get a satisfactory answer over the phone. She was angry with Joe for being the man next to a woman who wasn't her. She demanded to know who this woman was. He struggled to come up with an answer because he didn't know if 'I don't know' would make her even more angry. He said, "The thing about it is... I mean, it's not as if... Hey, wait a minute. Who was the man beneath you on the armchair?"

"It was... ahm... Oh look, there's my cat."

The cat came out the door at just the right time. Heather picked him up and asked him if he'd missed her. The cat didn't respond to this. Joe never said another word about the man beneath her because he knew that if he did she'd just ask about the woman next to him.

When Craig woke up on the following morning he saw a snake. He chose to ignore this.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves the sound of the piano when the wife plays it. A piano tuner came to tune it last week. He told us he'd been tuning pianos for forty years and in that time he met some fascinating pianos and a lot of boring people. He says he's never met anyone with as much personality as the dullest of pianos, and when he removes people who secretly live in pianos he restores the instrument's life. I've felt intimidated by our piano ever since he tuned it.

The Nose Spitters

The hedges need trimming, but I can't find the hedge clippers. I hope it hasn't been stolen. These things were always being stolen from the garden during my grandfather's days. A dancing thief would often pass through the garden on summer nights. He'd try to open the shed, and if he couldn't he'd just dance away again. If any garden tools were left out, he'd take them. My grandfather would deliberately leave things out for him. He'd invite some friends around and they'd watch the dancing thief from an upstairs window.

My cousin Gary once turned down the opportunity to join a band called The Nose Spitters because he didn't have any talent. He still had more talent than the people who did join the band. His friend Martin became the lead singer. At first they sounded as if they were trying to play while rolling down a hill, but they improved as time went by. After a few months they started playing gigs, and they built up a fan base. They even found themselves a manager, a man who called himself Peach.

This was the beginning of the end for Martin. Their new manager didn't like him. Peach was in love with a woman called Jackie, so he fired Martin and hired Jackie as the new lead singer.

Martin was furious. "He's an idiot," he said to Gary. "He told me I didn't have the charisma to be a lead singer. He doesn't understand our fan base. He thinks it's uncharismatic to take your shoes off and use them to hit your head, but the audience loved that. He wouldn't recognise one of our fans if they took their shoes off and hit his head. This new singer is completely inappropriate. She's a woman. None of our fans want a woman."

"I'd have said every single one of them wants a woman but they can't get one."

"They don't want a woman singing songs they can mosh to. It's a total sell-out. He hired her purely because of her looks. He's only interested in the band's media profile and he doesn't give a damn about the real fans. She wouldn't recognise one of the real fans either. She'd have trouble recognising anyone. She's fine when she's singing, but the rest of the time her head isn't really there at all. I've heard that she once spent four hours laughing at her own reflection in a pond. I don't know if it's drugs or if she's always been that way."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"What can I do?"

"You'll be complaining about it for years unless you actually do something. Remember the time that woman told you to stop swearing in the supermarket? You only stopped complaining about her when you put a pig's head in her roses."

"They're shooting a music video next week. Maybe we could sabotage that."

Martin got all of the details about the video from Jeff, the drummer in the band. They'd be shooting it near the ruins of a castle, and they only had one day to complete it. Peach hired a woman to keep an eye on Jackie, to make sure she didn't wander off.

Gary and Martin came up with a plan to make sure she did wander off. They distracted the woman who was looking after Jackie by getting an ice cream van to park near the castle. Gary knew the driver of the van, who used to travel around the country with his brother. Whenever they stopped they started fighting, which was a great way to attract customers.

It was also a great way to distract people. While Jackie's minder was watching the van shake from side to side as the brothers fought, Gary and Martin led Jackie away with a plastic butterfly on the end of a fishing line. She never took her eyes off the butterfly as she walked away over a hill. When they were well out of sight of the castle Martin coughed to attract her attention. She noticed him for the first time. She smiled and said, "Hi Martin."

"Yeah. This is all part of the video shoot. We have to hide from the rest of the band. They'll find us eventually. In a few hours."

"Are you still in the band?"

"I am. And so is Gary here. You probably haven't noticed him before because he's been playing bass."

"No, I'm fairly sure I have noticed him before."

When the director of the video realised that Jackie had gone missing he suspected that she'd been led away while they'd been distracted by the ice cream van. It was an unlikely place for an ice cream van to park. They had to get her back soon if they were going to get the video finished.

Frank, the guitarist, hadn't said a word all day. In fact, he hadn't said much for nearly a week. He'd been watching a documentary about sharks with his girlfriend one evening. He said, "I'd love to punch that shark in the eye."

His girlfriend said, "I've been meaning to talk to you about this. I think you should try to control your anger. You'll be so much happier if you think nice thoughts instead of nasty ones, like punching sharks. Don't say anything if it's inspired by hate of anger."

Frank didn't say anything at all. He tried his best to think nice thoughts, but these only made him more angry. He was able to suppress his rage until he realised that someone was trying to sabotage the video. He'd be perfectly justified in getting revenge. If the shark had bitten his leg off he'd be perfectly entitled to punch it in the eye.

He found an iron bar he could use as a weapon and he set off in pursuit of the kidnappers. The rest of the band and the film crew followed.

Gary, Martin and Jackie came to a lake. They met a man who was looking out over the water. Gary asked him if he knew of any good places to hide and he said, "I used to be known as Moby Dick because of a sea captain who was trying to kill me. He thought I was having an affair with his wife. I had to look for a lot of hiding places when he was trying to catch me, but I found that the best way to hide was to wear a disguise. I have a vast selection of disguises ye could use."

He lived in a cottage nearby. He took them there to show them his disguises. "I recommend wearing fishing outfits," he said. "It's the perfect disguise at the lake."

He gave them fishing hats and jackets. He had a boat on the lake. They all went out on that and they did their best to pretend they were fishing. When Gary asked him if he often used the boat he said, "Almost every day. Fishing is a good excuse to sit on a boat in a lake for hours. I rarely catch anything. The last fish I caught was eaten by a mouse."

"I used to be a fish," Jackie said. "In one of my past lives. I went to see a woman who told me that, and she said that in another one of my past lives I was a time traveller who came from the future. That made so much sense to me. Because sometimes when things happen I think, 'I knew that was going to happen.' Like when Martin told me to hide."

"What's going to happen next?" Martin said.

"Ahm... I think it's sort of like... we sit in the boat for a bit."

Frank was asking people if they'd seen a woman dressed in white. A man told them he'd seen a woman in white on the banks of the lake, but when they got there she was nowhere to be seen. All they saw was some people fishing on a boat. They were just about to leave when they heard Jackie sing a song that a robot from the future had sung to her in a dream. The sound was coming from the boat on the lake.

There were two boats moored to a wooden pier. The band got into one of them and the film crew got into the other. Frank started rowing furiously towards Jackie and her kidnappers.

Gary and Martin started to row, but Martin was more desperate to get away than Gary and they ended up going around in circles. Frank and the rest of the band caught up with them. "Hi Frank," Jackie said.

Frank said hello and then he reached out to catch the side of the boat, but he missed and he fell into the water. "Bye Frank," Jackie said.

The rest of the band tried to pull Frank back onboard, but the boat turned over as they leaned over the side. Martin and Gary started rowing towards dry land, and they were able to get away this time.

When Peach saw the video he fired everyone in the band apart from Jackie and he hired Gary, Martin and the man known as Moby Dick. It looked as if they were Jackie's band, and he only cared about her. But they split up a few weeks later when Jackie wandered into another band called 'Dave and the Bully Ants'. She became the new Dave.

Frank and the other former members of The Nose Spitters formed a band of their own. They used footage of their boat trip to make a video for a song about punching a shark. The video showed Frank punching the up-turned boat. The song became a surprise hit.

The moose's head over the fireplace used to be a Shakespearean actor in a past life, if you believe the wife's aunt. She says she can tell these things by looking deep into people's eyes. She looked into my eyes and it didn't take her long to see that I used to be sawdust. I doubt this very much, although it would explain why I talk to trees.