The Chalice

When the dog gets bored of burying things in the garden he buries things in the fields around the garden. My great-grandfather and his friends used to recreate battles in those fields. Most of these fake battles ended in real violence because of disputes over the ownership of trousers, which is how most of the real battles began.

My cousin Charlie was walking through a field one evening when he met a woman who was commentating on the weather for a radio station. She was standing in the middle of the field, talking into a microphone. He listened to her as she said, "The wind is strong now. It's blowing white clouds across the blue sky. I'm looking at the golden edges of the clouds."

Her commentary came to an end at nine o' clock. A man on a trawler near Tuskar lighthouse took up the commentary when she finished. She said she was tired of commentating on the weather. She really wanted to be a news reporter. Charlie told her he knew of a great news story. He'd just heard that one of his neighbours, a man called Nick, had unearthed a gold chalice when he was ploughing a field. Charlie said he'd take her to see the chalice.

Nick was playing the violin outside his back door when they arrived. Charlie introduced Nick to (he had to pause to ask her what her name was) Joyce, and then he introduced himself to her.

"I was wondering if we could see the chalice you found," Charlie said to Nick.

"I found a chalice," Nick said.

"Where do you keep it?"

"I buried it. In the ground."

"Did you bury it where you found it?"

"No. That thought crossed my mind too, so I dug there, but I couldn't find it."

"Can't you remember where you buried it?"

"No. I had a drink or two to celebrate finding it. And after three or four drinks I always think I need a few more. When I get drunk I always go through the same stages. First, I remember the love of my life. Sylvia. I sing a song I wrote about Sylvia and I write her a letter asking her to take me back. I have a box full of those letters. In the cold light of day I realise I'd be better off keeping them to myself. In that cold light, Sylvia is just a woman who put nuts up my nose when I was asleep. In the second stage of my drunkenness I become fascinated by interior design. I start making plans to re-decorate the house. I have many boxes full of those plans. In one of them I did a drawing of my living room decorated like a post office, and there's a man in a balaclava who thinks he's holding up the post office, so you can imagine what I must have been drinking before that. In the third stage I become paranoid, and this is when I decided to bury the chalice. Even if my living room had been decorated like a bank vault I wouldn't have been able to relax with the chalice in the house. I had been planning on decorating the house like a Swedish log cabin when the paranoia hit me. I felt I had to bury the chalice somewhere, so I did. The next stage is listening to Iron Maiden. I completely forgot about the chalice then."

"Maybe we can help you figure out where you buried it," Joyce said.

"Come on in," Nick said, "and I'll make ye a cup of tea while we think about it."

The radio was on in the kitchen. They listened to the weatherman on the trawler for a while. He said, "The wind is now going... I'll have to check what way we're going. I can see some clouds. Whatever way the wind is going, it's going there in a hurry. It has an urgent appointment. Maybe it's going on a date with a... I don't know what sex the wind is. Because it's so changeable I suppose it's... I can see some seagulls. And the waves. The waves are really, really big. I'm told we're heading west, so the wind would be going... I'll have to check on that."

As they drank tea in the kitchen Charlie listed out places where the chalice could be, but none of them rang a bell with Nick.

"What about Norman?" Charlie said. "He might have found it."

"I never thought of that," Nick said.

Norman carried a bucket with him everywhere he went. There were lots of things in the bucket. It served as a wallet and as a lunch box. He carried his CV in it when he went for job interviews. This helped him get a job as a bucket carrier. He even took the bucket with him on dates. His favourite hobby was searching for things with his metal detector because it meant he got to put a lot of things into his bucket. It was possible that the chalice was in there too.

Nick, Charlie and Joyce found Norman in a field nearby. He was searching with his metal detector. Nick asked him if he'd found a gold chalice recently and he said, "Now that I think about it, I did have a gold chalice in my bucket. I found it with a bottle top near the fairy fort."

"I don't remember being there," Nick said. "Where's the chalice now?"

"I gave it to Mrs. Loftus. She's always looking for things to hold flowers."

"Didn't you have any qualms about giving away something so valuable?"

"Now that I think about it, I should have thought about that before."

"So I suppose Mrs. Loftus would still have the chalice."

"I suppose so, unless she gave it away. Actually, now that I think about it, Seamus was asking about that gold chalice too. I told him Mrs. Loftus had it."

Mrs. Loftus didn't have the chalice. She told them that she had left it in a cupboard in the kitchen, but when she came back from the shop earlier that day the chalice was gone.

"Seamus must have it," Nick said to Charlie and Joyce as they left Mrs. Loftus's house. "He's always spying on people. He must have seen me finding the chalice, or else he just saw me burying it again. So he dug it up himself and buried it near the fairy fort. There's no way I'd have buried it there."

"It must be in his house now," Charlie said. "He wouldn't risk burying it again in daylight. And he might not bury it at all, in case Norman finds it again. If we could lure him away from the house for a while we'd have a chance to search the place."

"A beautiful woman could lure Seamus away from anything," Nick said as he looked at Joyce.

"I don't mind being the bait," Joyce said, "as long as he doesn't catch him."

Seamus was smoking a pipe in his garden when Nick, Charlie and Joyce walked by on the quiet road in front of his house. Nick said he was out for a walk with some friends of his. Seamus asked if he could join them, and Nick said he was more than welcome.

Seamus turned on the charm when he spoke to Joyce. He told her about his former career as a boxer and how he often had three fights in a week. When they got to Nick's house, Nick invited Seamus to join them for a cup of tea.

Nick's brother had a still on a mountainside where he made moo-shine, which looked and tasted like milk, but it had a very powerful effect on people. Seamus didn't notice that he was the only one who put milk in his tea. He was too engrossed in a story about the time he saved a drowning horse.

In Seamus's first stage of drunkenness he talks very quickly, saying every thought that comes into his head. He told them he'd installed a small door within his back door to allow moths to come in at night. Nick realised that if he broke down the moth door he could put his arm in and open the back door. He said he had to go outside to feed the dog. Seamus took no notice of this. He just kept rambling on, and in the course of his discourse he mentioned that he'd allowed his dog into the house. "He's been trying to move in for years," he said.

Nick returned shortly afterwards. From the look on his face they could tell that he didn't find the chalice. From the way his trousers were torn they could tell that he'd met the dog.

Seamus drank five cups of tea. His second stage of drunkenness is building model airplanes. When he reached this stage he felt a need to go home to work on his latest model.

Nick, Charlie and Joyce followed him home. They waited outside in the darkness. They looked in through his kitchen window and they saw him removing the chalice from a cupboard. He filled the chalice with whiskey and he drank from it.

When he finished the whiskey he put the chalice back in the cupboard and he left the kitchen, presumably to work on a model plane. Shortly afterwards they heard him entering the third stage of his drunkenness, which is singing Celine Dion songs. He sounded remarkably like Celine Dion. The dog seemed to regret his decision to move into the house. He left through a small door at bottom of the back door. He ran as far away from the house as he could.

Nick opened the back door by putting his arm through the moth door, and he went inside, followed closely by Charlie and Joyce. He opened the cupboard door. The chalice was almost hidden behind some saucepans. He put his arm in and he carefully lifted the chalice over the saucepans, but he was distracted by a sudden high note from Seamus. He let the chalice slip, and in his attempt to regain his grip he knocked over the saucepans.

Seamus's song ceased. When he arrived in the kitchen he was holding a shotgun. "I should have known you'd try to steal it from me," he said.

"I'm only taking what's rightfully mine."

"Finders keepers."

"I was the one who found it."

"And then I found it."

"Only because you were spying on me."

"There isn't a law against spying on people. There is a law against breaking into people's houses at night."

"If there isn't a law against spying on people," Joyce said, "then there can't be a law against recording them singing like Celine Dion." She took the microphone out of her coat pocket. "I've recorded everything."

Actually, she hadn't recorded anything, but he fell for it. He couldn't do anything when Nick walked away with the chalice. Before they left the kitchen they saw Seamus enter the final stage of his drunkenness: crying and eating crisps.

The moose's head over the fireplace is fascinated by a silver cup that my grandfather dug up in the garden when he was looking for his wedding ring. I've found lots of things in the garden over the years, but nothing of real value. When I was young I used to look for gold under the ends of rainbows, but all I ever found was empty bottles.

Notty O'Shea's Escape from a Mental Institution

Summer will start any day now, according to the wife's aunt. She says she can predict the weather by looking at the behaviour of snails. She understands snails. When she was young she used to organise snail weddings, but nearly all snail marriages ended in divorce because they couldn't agree on whose house to move into.

My cousin Albert often visited his friend Brenda because she made a cake almost every day. Her cakes were really just baskets full of biscuits, but when people pointed this out to her she accused them of being snobs. "You're just a tube full of snobbery," is what she said to a man who told her that Bobby Bluebud could make one of her cakes without burning down the kitchen (Bobby Bluebud was an accident-prone TV character who burnt down the kitchen every time he tried to make toast or paint the gate).

Albert tried to be complimentary about the cakes. He found it easier to be complimentary if he considered the cakes as works of art, but she didn't always agree with his interpretations of her creations. After looking at one of her cakes from many different angles he said, "It looks like when Notty O'Shea escaped from a mental institution."

She was angry with this assessment. "It looks nothing like that," she said.

"I meant it as a compliment. Notty O'Shea wasn't even supposed to be in the mental institution."

"My cake has nothing to do with a mental institution or with Notty O'Shea."

"I'm not saying it has anything to do with either of them. I'm saying I see Notty O'Shea's escape from a mental institution. He was just visiting someone else."

"How can it have nothing to do with Notty O'Shea or the mental institution he was trapped in for months if it has something to do with Notty O'Shea's escape from that mental institution?"

"Okay, it does have something to do with them, but it's something very small. I was thinking of the joy he felt when he escaped."

"So when you look at my cake you see Notty O'Shea running through the fields around the mental institution in the middle of the night, with no trousers?"

"He had a very good reason for not wearing trousers. Most of the men who run through the fields have very bad reasons for not wearing trousers."

"If you'd mentioned Screechy Simon I wouldn't have minded so much."

"Notty O'Shea is a far more cultured man than Screechy Simon. You're just focussing on the fact that Notty was in a mental institution and he made his escape without any trousers. You have a completely false impression of him because of these things. Screechy Simon would have taken his trousers off after escaping from a mental institution. Notty once painted a beautiful picture of bald eagles in a pram. You can see it for yourself and you'll get a better insight into his character. The painting is hanging in his hall."

They went to see Notty O'Shea. They probably could have called at a better time. He wasn't wearing any trousers when he opened the door. He wore a kimono and he was smoking a pipe. Albert said he wanted to show the painting to Brenda, and Notty invited them in.

The painting depicted bald middle-aged men with wings in a pram. Brenda recognised the man wearing dungarees. She said, "Isn't that the man who sings in the pub with his band, 'Yellow Brick Bus'?"

"They're all members of Yellow Brick Bus," Notty said. "They waited until they were in their forties before they formed the band. I think it's sort of a mid-life crisis."

"Why did you paint them in a pram?"

"My aunt Ruby told me to do it. She's not the sort of woman you can say no to. She made my uncle make things to throw at ducks, but I think that was just something to pass the time, because he'd never be able to keep up with a duck. He needs things like that to keep his mind focussed. He'd forget his own teacup if it wasn't stuck to his hand."

Albert knew that throwing things at ducks wasn't very cultured, so he pointed at a painting on the opposite wall and he asked Notty where the inspiration for that one came from.

"That's a portrait of a woman I was once engaged to," Notty said.

Brenda said, "It looks more like a wall to me."

Albert was going to point out that if her baskets of biscuits could be a cake then Notty's paintings of a wall could be a portrait of his ex, but he thought better of it. Notty said, "This is just my impression of her. My final impression of her, not my first. She was always waiting for the right weather to get married, but she never found it. She went looking all over the country for it. I don't know what exactly she was looking for because she came across just about every type of weather imaginable. She left me after she fell in love with a man who stole a chandelier from her house. She caught him after chasing him through the fields. They got married in a church with no roof. There's moss on the stone floor, and the altar is covered in ivy. She said that this was what she was looking for all along -- she wasn't looking for the right weather at all. She just wanted the weather to be with her in the church as she got married. It was a grey day. I was there."

"Wasn't it painful to see her marry someone else?" Albert said.

"Not at all. I was trying to figure out how to tell her I didn't want to marry her, but she saved me the trouble when she said she didn't want to marry me. I even painted a picture of the church."

He showed them the painting. It was hanging over the fireplace in the dining room. Brenda said, "I didn't know you could get into that church. The door has always been locked every time I went there."

"I have a key," Notty said. "The church is on my uncle's land."

After Notty put some trousers on they went to see the church. He opened the door and they spent half an hour looking around inside. Just as they were leaving they saw two men in white coats walking towards the church. One of the men said, "There he is." They ran towards Notty.

Notty ran away, but he didn't seem too concerned. Albert and Brenda ran with him. Notty told them he'd often been chased by the men in white coats, but he'd found a perfect hiding place. His uncle used to prick inanimate objects with a pin to see if they were really animals in disguise. He claimed that a chair once ran away after he pricked it. A rock in a field turned out to be a man. There were other people hiding in tree and rock costumes in the field. They used to be members of the costume department of a travelling theatre company who had to go into hiding after they performed a play about a man who used to ask a basketball for advice. The basketball always told him to shoot other basketballs. This character was entirely fictional, but a gangster thought it was about him. He wasn't happy with the way they portrayed them, and he was looking for revenge, so they had to hide from him. The costume department made the tree and rock costumes and they hid in a field. Notty's uncle discovered them, and he told them they were welcome to stay for as long as they wanted in one of his own fields. Most of the theatre company moved on after a few months, but the costume department stayed behind, working on costumes inside their own costumes. They made brick costumes for birds. You could build a wall with these bricks, and when it was finished it would fly away.

Notty led Albert and Brenda down a lane lined with hedges. They climbed over a gate and entered the field where the costume department were hiding. Notty got Albert and Brenda to hide in tree costumes, and he disguised himself as a rock. When the men in white coats climbed over the gate they looked around the field, expecting to see Notty and his friends, but there was no one there. "They must be hiding behind a rock," one of them said.

They looked behind every rock and tree, but there was no sign of Notty.

Screechy Simon was passing by. He looked into the field to see what was going on. One of the men in white said, "Let's just take him instead."

At this point Simon's trousers dropped (he could will them to drop). The man in white said, "On second thoughts, let's just leave him alone."

Simon left his trousers down. Brenda could see him from inside the tree costume, and she saw Notty disguised as a rock. It was obvious that Notty was much more cultured, and she took Albert's comment about her cake as a compliment.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed watching the golf over the weekend. Padraig Harrington's victory was an added bonus. I tried playing golf a few months ago, but I couldn't get the ball to go where I wanted it to go. I had to pretend that I wanted it to go where it went. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince my playing partners that I wanted to hit a nun.

The Watchers

When I was trimming a hedge I found an old china tea pot with a matching cup and saucer. They were hidden deep within the hedge. I think they've been there for decades. The hedge is part of a maze that my grandfather made. It's a very simple maze, so it's difficult to get lost in it, but it's not so easy to get in and out of it. There's no entrance. My grandfather used two step-ladders to get in and out -- one to climb over the hedge and another to get down at the other side. He'd sit on a deck chair in the centre of the maze and drink tea. I've heard that he created the maze just to avoid looking at his sister-in-law's painting of a man swimming in a lake.

My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, once joined a bird-watching club, but they didn't get to see many birds. The president of the club gave long lectures on the art of seeing things. He taught them how to see a paperclip, but Jane was bored after a few minutes of looking. She said to him, "When are we going to look at birds?"

He said, "We could go outside and look at birds right now but the experience would be wasted on you unless you learn how to look at paper clips first. Or sausages. Next week we'll be looking at sausages."

Jane and Claudia decided to leave the club before they looked at sausages. A man called Greg left with them, but he continued his bird-watching. They often saw him with his binoculars in the park or in the fields around the town. When Jane was walking through the park one day she saw two birds on a sun dial right behind Greg. The birds were looking at him, but he was looking in the opposite direction, towards some people who were throwing a Frisbee at each other. It was only a matter of time before one of them got injured, so it was no great surprise that he found them more interesting than the birds. But on the following day Jane and Claudia saw him looking at a woman who was looking at a paper clip, and they started to think that he was watching people rather than birds. He was writing his observations in a notebook.

"I'd love to know what he's writing," Claudia said.

"So would I," Jane said. "And we're going to find out. He's almost certainly been watching us. We have every right to steal it and see what he's written about us. If you can distract him, I'll take it."

They took their chance to steal the notebook when they saw him next to a river one evening. He was looking at a house through his binoculars. The notebook was on a deck chair behind him. Claudia distracted him by pointing at a rock in a field and saying, "What's that bird over there?"

"I can't see any bird," Greg said.

"It's really, really small. I saw it trying to catch a worm, but the worm was putting up a good fight."

Greg looked at the rock through his binoculars. "I can't see it," he said.

"Maybe it flew away. Can you see the worm?"

"No."

"Wow. The bird must have won."

Jane was long gone by the time Greg noticed that his notebook was missing. She met up with Claudia in a cafe and they started reading his findings. Greg had observed nearly fifty people, and he'd classified them into different groups. There were only two groups, and one of them had just one member. A man who once shot a wedding cake was classified as an intellectual and everyone else was classified as a hippy. There were different types of hippies, such as stupid hippies, screechy hippies, self-obsessed hippies and about-to-explode-with-anger hippies. Jane and Claudia were classified as unimaginative hippies. They were furious when they read this. In Jane's entry he'd added the observation 'Looks like a member of Kraftwerk'.

"We've got to do something about this," Jane said.

"It's a bit late now."

"I mean revenge. It's never too late for revenge. We'll make him cross out the word 'unimaginative' and write 'vengeful' instead. Or 'imaginatively vengeful'. Or just 'insane'."

"I don't want to do anything insane."

"It might not come to that. We might not have to do very much at all. If we show this notebook to everyone mentioned in it, then the revenge might take care of itself."

Most people were furious when they saw what he'd written about them. A woman called Imogen was classified as a 'reactionary hippy'. He had added the observation 'A pacifist with a violent streak'. Jane and Claudia showed this to her. She remained completely calm as she said, "I think we should drug him, shave off all his hair and tattoo the word 'dog-kisser' on his face. I know for a fact that he dislikes being referred to as a dog-kisser."

"I think that might be a step too far," Jane said.

Only one man agreed that he was a screechy hippy, but he was angry about being observed. He suggested that they get revenge on Greg by observing him. It would surely stop him from observing people in the future.

So on a Saturday morning in August, when Greg stepped outside his front door he saw a crowd of people waiting for him. He'd been expecting to see them ever since his notebook went missing, so he acted as if this was the sort of thing that happened every day. The fact that they chose to act in this way only confirmed his view that they were all hippies.

He said 'good morning' to the crowd and he walked around them. They followed him into town. He never turned around or asked them what they were up to. In the park he met a woman called Sarah. She was doing her best to impress him. She said, "I have tickets for the theatre. It's a play about a man who puts a kettle on his head, for a laugh, and then he gets struck by lightning, and he can't stop laughing after that. It's supposed to be good. I thought you might like to go with me."

"The theatre isn't really my thing," Greg said.

"Yeah, I know. It's rubbish, isn't it? It was my sister who got the tickets and she didn't even want them... What is your thing?"

"I don't really have a thing."

Jane coughed and held up the notebook. Greg said, "Oh yeah. I spy on stupid hippies."

"That sounds like fun."

"Observing them from afar is far more pleasant than seeing them up close."

He went to the shop to get a newspaper and the watchers followed. Tracey, the woman behind the counter, was behaving just like Sarah. She said to him, "Do you want to come around to my place later on to try some cheese I bought when I was in Wicklow?"

"I can't. I'm busy."

"Oh... Why do you have an audience?"

"Ignore them. They're just hippies."

"They weren't there when we, ah..."

"No."

"I don't mind them being there if you want to, ah..."

"I can't. I'm busy."

"Right. Maybe some other time then."

Greg left the shop with his audience. He was walking down a street towards the bookies when he met a woman called Ruth. This time he was behaving like Sarah and Tracey. He said to her, "I thought you might like to go to the theatre with me. There's a very good play on. It's about a man who puts a kettle on his head and he gets struck by lightning."

"I can't. I'm... doing something else."

"Oh. Okay. Maybe some other time."

"I have to go now."

She walked on without saying goodbye. He kept looking at her until she disappeared around the corner.

"I can't believe you like her," Jane said to Greg.

"Who said I liked her?"

"Your whole demeanour is like a flashing neon sign that says 'I like her'."

"Maybe I do. What's wrong with that?"

"She's evil."

"That's what I like about her."

"I once saw her threatening to set a man's car on fire just because he was wearing shorts in a supermarket. And she used a cattle prod on carol singers."

"Only a hippy would find that behaviour objectionable."

Jane and the Greg-watchers followed Greg back to his house. He didn't invite them in. As they waited outside in the garden Claudia said, "We should do something about Ruth and Greg."

"What could we do?" Jane said.

"We could bring them together. What better revenge is there than getting him involved with a woman who once set her boyfriend's car on fire?"

"Yeah, but he'd probably like that. A better sort of revenge would be to make her despise him forever."

Brendan, one of the watchers, said, "Greg used to be in a folk band. They released an album called 'Buttercups and Rabbits'. I have a vinyl copy of it at home. On the cover they're all dressed in Aran sweaters and they're in a field with buttercups and rabbits. My niece said it would make a nun puke, and she's normally right about these things. There's a song on it about looking at clouds. And there's one called 'I love her knees and toes'."

"If Ruth were to see that album cover," Jane said, "she'd never be able to look him in the eye again. She wouldn't even need to hear any of the songs."

Jane, Claudia and Brendan called around to Ruth's house later that day. Brendan brought the album. When Ruth opened the door Jane said, "We saw Greg talking to you in the park earlier on. He clearly has a thing for you. I don't know if you noticed that. We just thought the two of ye would make such a great couple. He's such a great guy, but you probably haven't seen the real Greg. That's why we brought you this album he made when he was younger. It will give you an insight into his personality."

Brendan gave her the album. She stared at the cover. "Thanks," she said, without taking her eyes off Greg. She closed the door.

Jane, Claudia and Brendan went back to Greg's house, where the other Greg-watchers were watching him mow the lawn. They were taking notes.

Ruth arrived at eight o' clock that evening. They were expecting her to set his car on fire, but she knocked on the front door. He opened it and she went inside. The watchers outside were waiting for the house to catch fire, but after an hour of waiting they heard him singing the song about clouds to her. She had a soft spot for men in bands, no matter what type of music they played. She once had a fling with a man who dressed as a jester and played the lute.

Ruth and Greg left the house later that evening. They walked to the pub, and the watchers followed. There was just as much to hear as there was to see. For the first time ever, they heard Ruth laugh.

They all went into the pub. The bar man was delighted with the sudden influx of customers. The watchers felt like drinking to raise their sinking spirits because it was becoming more apparent that they'd done Greg a favour in their attempt at revenge. Imogen said, "I think my idea is even more appropriate now. Drug him, shave his head and tattoo 'dog-kisser' on his face. She'll read that every time she goes to kiss him. She'll never kiss him if she thinks he's just been kissing a dog."

"No," Jane said. "It wouldn't feel right to come between them now. We'll just have to let nature take its course. Surely it'll end in tears. With Ruth involved it'll end in blood as well, and a tattoo on his face."

The watchers took turns observing him over the following days. They were outside his house when Tracey spray-painted a word on the side of his car. It was similar to dog-kisser, only this one related to sheep. She did this after he said he couldn't meet her because he had to visit his sick grandmother, but she saw him with Ruth. Sarah threw a potato at him. Many other women in the town were angry with him because of his relationship with Ruth. He was obviously afraid of what they'd do to him. Jane and Claudia observed him from a distance through binoculars, and they could tell that he was nervous every time he left his house. It was much more entertaining than watching a paper clip or a sausage.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't mind being observed for long periods of time. I've had many staring matches with him over the years, but he always wins. He doesn't mind people singing to him, but he does have a problem with people singing at him. The wife's niece once spent three hours singing 'The Wizard of Oz' at him. She kept singing the words 'The Wizard of Oz' over and over again, constantly re-inventing the tune. When she does that to me I can run away and lock myself in the shed (I had the place sound-proofed for such eventualities). But the moose's head can't get away. He has to wait until the final 'The Wizard of Oz', which is followed by the words 'does judo', 'eats pigeons' or 'keeps crying'.

The Bard of the Bored

I love walking around the garden in the twilight. The wife's aunt refuses to set foot in the place after the light starts to fade. She says she gets a feeling she's being followed, but every time she turns around there's no one there. She thinks it's a ghost who hides when she turns around. This is why she's attached a rear-view mirror to her hat. When I was in school one of my teachers had a mirror on his hat. He had an eye patch on the back of his head.

My uncle Harry often spends a few hours in his local pub. A man called Hogan spends most of his waking hours there, and a few sleeping ones. Drinking and smoking are his only pastimes, and he used to be able to do both all day long until the smoking ban was introduced. He was no longer able to drink and smoke at the same time. He said it was like having to choose between two lovers. It's an appropriate analogy, given the amount of women who have tried to kill him over the years.

He learnt how to blow smoke rings when he was still in his teens. After years of practise he could create smoke horses, and he was able to make them gallop across the room. When he did it in the pub people used to bet on the outcome of the smoke horse race. Some people were against passive smoking, and they objected to the races. One man was against gambling. He tried to inhale the horses. Hogan once he smoked a 'herbal' cigarette. The horses turned into clowns, who started fighting each other. The gamblers bet on the outcome of the fight, but some people tried to inhale the clowns.

Harry became embroiled in a dispute about the outcome of one of the races. He backed the winner, but this horse went right through the horse in second place to reach the finishing line. A man called Jerry had put money on the horse in second place. He claimed that he should at least get his money back because the winner's essence would have been altered as it passed through the other horse. It would have taken some of the other horse with it.

"That's ridiculous," Harry said. "It was clearly the same horse as it was before it passed through."

"Even if it failed to take some of the other horse with it, your horse must have been altered in some way. When a pint passes through you it's in no fit state to be a pint when it comes out the other end."

"Yeah, but that horse went the opposite way to a pint."

"Look in the rules of horse racing and you'll find that passing through another horse is an illegal move."

"I doubt you'd find anything of the sort in the rules of horse racing."

"He stole the soul of the other horse."

"You won't find anything about that in the rules either."

When disputes like these couldn't be resolved they always asked Brian to pass judgement because he was the most intelligent of all the drinkers in the pub. But you had to get him drunk before he'd express his opinion on anything. He lacked confidence in his views when he was sober. When he was slightly drunk he'd lose the willpower to keep his delusions intact and he'd start crying and talking about how they were all doomed. This stage never lasted long. He'd feel a need to get drunker, and this was easily accomplished because he could get drunk on his own tears. By the time the tears dried up his words would be slurred, but there would be a constant flow of words. All of his theories and views would come flooding out.

Unfortunately, he was very careful not to get drunk. They needed to make him feel a need to drink, or to make him cry, and this is why Harry convinced the bar man to allow The Bard of the Bored back into the pub. The Bard was a story-teller whose stories lasted hours and they rarely had a point. He gave himself the name 'The Bard of the Bored'. He'd been barred from the pub. One of his stories would surely make Brian drink, or make him cry.

Brian was sitting at the bar with a glass of lemonade when the Bard arrived. He sat on a stool next to Brian and started telling his story. "There once was a man who went to a church made out of cider," he said. "Or was it cardboard? Probably cardboard. He went there because he had a ticket for the church. He hid the ticket in his head, and when the time came to produce it he couldn't find it. He took everything out of his head. This is when he realised that Bird Sleuth had been in his head, investigating a crime. Bird Sleuth is a bird who solves crimes, mostly crimes committed by birds. His hobby was shouting at butterflies. He used to collect them, but some people thought that this was cruel..."

An hour later, after Brian had finished his crying, the Bard was talking about a woman who loved circles. "She was deeply suspicious of objects with edges. She had other reasons for being suspicious of the machine for making birds. But she wasn't suspicious of Kettle Drunk, a man who had dots for eyes and thousands of tiny hats for hairs. She said she'd like to know how many teeth she has without counting them, and he said he knew someone who could find out. There was a certain antipathy to the way he said 'scum', and this annoyed the small fortune teller stuck to his foot. He used to walk his bird in the park every evening, mainly to annoy the fortune teller. The casting director would get everyone to play the shepherd when she was casting the roles in a pie."

"There are no rolls in a pie," Brian said.

"That's what she used to say. She said it to a cow once."

"I once saw a cow who could play golf."

"I once saw a man who could play a cow. He could get a beautiful tune out of cows when he was milking them. The milk tasted nicer too."

"I once drank the milk of a talking cow and I couldn't speak for weeks. My friends and family couldn't find me when they didn't have the sound of my voice to locate me. It was as if I was invisible."

"That happened to me once too, but I don't think anyone noticed I was missing."

The Bard and Brian kept talking. "They could be talking all night," Harry said. "Why don't we settle this dispute some other way. We'll choose a word and we'll bet on which one of them will say the word first. We just have to decide on the word."

"What about 'Elvis'?" Jerry said.

"Why Elvis?" Harry said.

"Why not Elvis?"

"It could take them months to say 'Elvis'."

"I say it a few times every day."

"We need something that they say a few times every day."

"What about 'the'?"

"No, that's too obvious."

"What about 'oneself'?"

"'One must talk to one's elf.' That's what my grandfather used to say."

"Did he have an elf?"

"He did. But it could have been a coconut."

"A coconut fell on my grandfather's head," Jerry said. "That's how he found out about gravity. It was a momentous occasion. He jumped up in the air to celebrate and he came back down again. He stopped carrying an anchor around the place with him, and he didn't have to tie everything down. But years later he did float away after jumping on a trampoline. If he hadn't caught hold of a chimney he might never have come down. After this he always carried metal weights in his pockets."

Harry and Jerry kept talking and they forgot about the bet. At closing time the bar man was struggling to get his customers to leave because they were engrossed in their conversations, so he said he could settle the dispute over the race. He took them all to his brother's junkyard, and he woke his brother by poking him with a stick. There was a powerful magnet in the junkyard. The bar man got Harry and Jerry to sit on office chairs near the magnet. When it was switched on, the metal in the chairs would be drawn to it. Whoever reached it first would be deemed the winner of their argument.

Jerry hit the magnet first because he carried metal weights in his pocket to make sure he didn't float away, like his grandfather. His pockets hit the magnet hard, so the joy of winning the bet was tempered by the pain he had to endure to win it.

The smoking ban put an end to the indoor smoke horse races, and there was always too much breeze to hold the races outside. They found other things to bet on. They used to drop feathers and bet on which one would reach the ground first. They also bet on the feathers outside in the wind. They'd bet on which feather would stay in the air for longest. It became a cross-country sport.

The Bard was allowed tell his stories in the pub again, and the other drinkers bet on whether or not a certain word would be included. He still hasn't said 'Elvis'.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't seem to mind when Ellen, one of our neighbours, calls around. She rambles on for hours. She could bore a stone to tears, but I suppose the moose's head must have learnt how to cope with boredom a long time ago. While she was telling one of her stories a few years ago the wife's uncle made a few phone calls and arranged for a German brass band to play at his funeral. It was only on the following day that he realised he wasn't even dead.

The Referee

The garden gnomes are struggling to stay upright in the wind. The Snow White gnome has lost some of her dwarves. When I mentioned this to the wife's aunt she did her impression of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It was basically just Snow White kicking the air around her, shouting, "Get away! Get away!"

My cousin Hector went to a match with his friends, Steve and Sean, on a Saturday afternoon in July. Half of the match was football and the other half involved looking at feathers. Most of the spectators lost interest and they started looking at a man who was looking at something through a telescope.

Hector, Steve and Sean were more interested in the referee. He looked as if he was dead, and that he was only staying upright because he'd been attached to a pole. He was standing near the sideline and he never moved. When Hector asked him if he was okay he said, "Is there something wrong with my eyeballs?"

"They look fine, relative to the rest of your face."

"Thanks. That's all I really wanted to know."

A few minutes later the referee looked up at the sky and shouted, "Can you tell me when the next waiter will be coming by?"

Hector said, "Who are you talking to?"

"I don't know. God, maybe. Whoever controls the waiters."

"Do the waiters come by often?"

"Oh yes. The last one was here just three years ago. He brought me a brandy. I could do with another one now."

"I haven't seen any waiters around," Steve said, "but maybe we can get you a brandy from the pub."

Hector, Steve and Sean went to the pub and ordered a brandy for the referee. While they were waiting at the bar Sean met a woman called Vera. He started talking to her, and he stayed behind in the pub when Hector and Steve took the brandy to the referee.

The drink seemed to restore some life to the ref. He took a renewed interest in the game, and he started giving yellow cards to anyone who looked at a feather. He gave a red card to a man who looked at a pineapple.

Hector and Steve went back to the pub. Sean was engrossed in a conversation with Vera, and they were still talking at closing time.

Hector and Steve went to see Sean on the following day. He was making a spare head out of mud, just in case something happened to his real head. Hector guessed that something must have already happened to his real head.

They noticed that the mud head had false teeth, and on closer inspection they saw that the teeth belonged to Boris. They could tell because of a missing tooth at the front. Boris kept his false teeth in his pocket, and he only put them in his mouth when he needed to smile or to bite through some rope.

"Boris will be furious when he finds out what you did with his teeth," Steve said to Sean. "And he's not the sort of person you'd want to anger. He beat up that man who made fun of his fingernails."

"Maybe you should give them back," Hector said.

"It can't be done," Sean said. "The head said he'd bite anyone who tries to take the teeth out."

There was definitely something wrong with Sean's head. It would only get worse if Boris found out where his teeth were, so when Sean's back was turned, Hector took the teeth from the mud head. He left with Steve.

"We need to get the teeth back into Boris's pocket," Steve said, "At least it'll be easier than putting them in his mouth."

"I'm not so sure. I'd say Boris would be more careful about what goes in and out of his pocket than what goes in and out of his mouth."

"We need to create a distraction. I think we should use The Clappers."

The Clappers are a group of people who can be hired to applaud just about anything, from plays to dogs digging holes. On Christmas Eve they do it to raise money for charity. They go from house to house, applauding people at their front doors. They were once hired to boo a politician, but they couldn't do it with any conviction, so they stick to the applause now.

Hector and Steve hired The Clappers to applaud Boris while he was hammering a wall. He stopped hammering when the applause began. He seemed a bit confused at first. This was the perfect time for Hector to creep up behind him and put the teeth back into his pocket, but Boris regained his composure and he thought he should smile at the people applauding him. He reached towards his pocket to get the teeth just as Hector was about to withdraw his hand.

Boris caught hold of Hector's hand. He seemed a bit confused at first, but then it all made sense to him. "You were just using them as a distraction," he said. "You were trying to steal my teeth."

"No, I was trying to return your teeth."

"My teeth weren't missing."

"When was the last time you used them?"

"About three days ago, when I had to break someone's saxophone."

"They went missing in the meantime. You just didn't notice."

"Why didn't you bring them to me and say, 'I found these.'"

"Because you'd have thought we stole them."

"I wouldn't. I know ye were trying to steal them because you had your hand in my pocket."

"You must have put your hand in your pocket for other reasons. Didn't you notice that something was missing?"

"No."

Steve gave a signal to The Clappers to start applauding. Boris turned around when he heard the applause. Hector and Steve ran away.

They hid behind a ditch. They didn't move for a few minutes, but then Steve saw some teeth marks on a tree nearby and they went to investigate. They knew that the bite on the bark must have been caused by Boris's teeth because of the missing front tooth. They saw a similar bite on a tree just a few yards away.

While they were examining this, Boris crept up behind them. They turned around when he said, "Prepare to lose some teeth." He was holding a stick.

Hector showed him the bite marks and he said, "Whoever took your teeth bit these trees."

Boris said, "I think ye took my teeth for a joyride and ye're trying to blame it on someone else now."

"We could at least follow the trail and see where it leads."

"Okay. But ye're only delaying the inevitable."

The trail led to Vera's house. Hector and Steve thought that Sean must have come across the teeth somehow and then ended up at Vera's house, but Boris was able to tell them what really happened. He remembered being in the pub the night before. Vera asked him if she could put her hand in his pocket, and he told her to go ahead. He thought he'd have to pay for it, but she did it for free.

Hector knocked on Vera's front door. When she opened it he asked her about the teeth and she admitted taking them. She told them about her father. He used to play golf, and every time he found a golf ball he'd test it to see if he could eat it. Almost all of them were inedible, but once he found a golf ball that was made out of marshmallow. He enjoyed eating it, but then he regretted it because he'd eaten something he'd found in the woods. He was afraid he'd get sick, but he didn't, and this convinced him that eating things he found in the woods was a good idea. He ate things he found in the fields as well, or he tried to eat them. Most trees were inedible.

Vera always wondered what it would feel like to attempt to eat nearly everything she found. She told Sean about this after a few drinks in the pub, and he suggested using Boris's teeth to eat things, so she wouldn't damage her own teeth.

After acquiring the teeth, she left the pub with Sean. They tried to eat trees, fence posts, cans, clothes pegs and a shoe. Hector and Steve suspected that Sean's head must have been affected by something he ate. Vera told them that Sean wanted to go to see the referee. The ref was feeling much better after his brandy, but he still hadn't moved. Sean bit his arm to see if this would bring him to life, and it did. The referee ran in circles for a few minutes, and he started laughing. Then he did a dance. It seemed as if he'd been set free. "You're the referee now," he said to Sean. "I became the referee years ago after biting a scarecrow, but you're the referee now."

The man ran away into the night. They heard his laughter fading to silence. Sean didn't feel as if he was the referee. He just went back to biting things with Vera.

Boris was horrified to hear that his teeth had been in the mouth of another man, and that they'd been used to bite another man. "He'll pay for this," Boris said. "You can let him know that he'll pay for this."

Hector and Steve went to see Sean to warn him. Sean had started working on another replacement head after the mud head lost its teeth. This new head been carved from a turnip, and it looked much better than the mud head. This gave Hector an idea.

Later that evening Hector and Steve went to see Boris, and they told him they wanted to talk him out of getting revenge on Sean. He didn't want to listen, but they said they'd buy him a few drinks in the pub, and he agreed to go.

Their attempts to talk him out of the revenge only made him more angry. "Sean wouldn't hurt a fly," Steve said. "He doesn't deserve any phyiscal retribution for using your teeth. He says that if you let him have the teeth again, he'd kiss you."

After a few hours of this, Boris was full of rage and alcohol. He couldn't wait any longer to get revenge on Sean. Hector told him that Sean was at the football pitch, standing where the referee used to stand.

Hector and Steve went to the pitch with Boris. It took longer than expected because Boris wasn't able to walk in a straight line, but he was just about able to stand in front of Sean and throw a punch at Sean's head. When the head fell off, Boris started screaming. He ran away. Steve picked the turnip off the ground and replaced it on the body of the scarecrow.

Hector, Steve and Sean went to Boris's house later that night. Boris looked terrified when he opened the door. Hector told him that they'd managed to re-attach Sean's head, but he was still a bit dazed. Boris shook Sean's hand and he said, "I'm terribly sorry about what happened. If you ever want to use my teeth for anything, just ask."

The moose's head over the fireplace seems to be transfixed by the wife's aunt's impression of Snow White. It does have a hypnotic effect. Billy, one of our neighbours, has a stag's head over his fireplace. The head also serves as a goldfish bowl. You can see the fish if you look into the stag's eyes, but you'll be hypnotised by them if you look for long enough. Billy says the head is very good at identifying the best time to buy and sell shares.