The Keys

The dog has a new friend to play with in the garden. Our neighbours got a new dog (they call him 'Caveman' because of his wild hair) and he often comes around to visit. The wife's aunt doesn't believe he's a real dog. She thinks he's a ghost and that he's communicating with her telepathically. She says he told her he used to be able to tap dance when he had real paws, and real shoes.

My cousin Gary was eating an ice cream cone in the park one summer day. He was perfectly happy to stand there with his ice cream, watching a dog run in circles.

He saw a woman who was frowning, and she was putting a lot of effort into keeping the frown on her face. He went over to her and asked her if something was wrong, and she said, "I've lost my keys."

Having divulged the answer she could erase the frown from her face. She looked relieved, and this led him to conclude that there was some truth to our grandfather's favourite maxim: 'A problem shared is a problem solved'. When he passed this advice on to the woman, a minor frown returned to her face. She said, "But I still haven't found my keys."

This led Gary to conclude that there may after all be some truth to our grandmother's favourite maxim, which was: 'If we started listening to that eejit we'd all be living underground, trying to see how much of our belongings we can hide in our mouths'.

He didn't think this advice would be of any benefit to the woman in the park, whose name was Sophie, so he kept it to himself. Instead he said, "Where were you when you realised your keys were missing?"

"Exactly where I am now," she said. "I haven't moved since making the realisation."

"Have you tried looking around you?"

"No. I never thought of that. If I had thought of it I wouldn't have thought there'd be much point in doing it. But I suppose it's worth trying anyway."

They searched the ground all around her, but they didn't find the keys. By then his ice cream had gone too, but he had no desire to get it back.

He suggested going to the phone booth. He often went there when he wanted to know something. Countless answers were written on the glass of the booth.

They looked through them to see if any of those answers corresponded to the question 'Where are my keys?'. One of the answers was 'Ask Bongo Patten', so they decided to try that one.

They went to see Bongo, and he was glad he'd advertised on the phone booth. He said he'd need to go into a trance to answer the question. He'd been going into trances since he was sixteen, when his uncle chased a cat for three hours. It had a hypnotic effect on Bongo. He fell into a trance in which he thought he was being chased by the editor of the local newspaper, who was holding a stick. Despite this feeling, he couldn't move. He was filled with terror until he came out of the trance. Ever since then he's always threatened newspaper editors with a stick if they get too close to him and he's often sought the adrenalin rush of the terror he experienced in the trance. He's never quite matched the terror of that first trance, but he's come close on a few occasions. In one trance he thought he was Napoleon and he was berating a man who told a dirty joke to a bear.

He went into a trance to find an answer to her question about the keys. It sounded as if he was trying to convince a woman to sing in his band and she was refusing because they sang too many songs about killing and eating dragons. When he came out of his trance he said, "I've been in many semi-conscious pipe bands in my travels through the ether. I've been sick and well, rich and poor, tall, small and square. I've written letters to myself, and when I've emerged from my trance I've spent months searching for those letters, but I only found one of them. It said 'Dear Me, I think you should look behind me, Yours Sincerely, You'. When I looked behind me I saw something words wouldn't stick to if I glued them on and stuck them with pins. It's enough to say that it was well worth my while looking behind me. And now I've seen another sight that's resistant to words. 'The truth' are the only two words I can attach to it, and never a truer word or two were ever spoken. 'The Truth' with a capital T is that ye should ask Boyle Keneally."

"How would he know where my keys are?"

"He knows where everything is. Ask about the keys and he'll just close his eyes and he'll see them in his head. Ye just have to find him first. Not many people know where he is. Go to see his brother Ball first. Ball will find Boyle and Boyle will find your keys. Ball is like Boyle's secretary."

Bongo charged twenty euros for his 'consultation'. Gary and Sophie found Ball at an abandoned petrol station just outside the town. Gary asked him if he could locate Boyle. Ball said, "I can do that. I can do that. Did you ever hear such rubbish about the milkman? Did you ever hear such rubbish? Stop licking my potatoes."

Ball took out a diary and looked through it. He said, "Boyle had an eleven o' clock appointment at the old mill. We should find him there. It wouldn't be so crispy if you stopped picking it."

They went to the old mill, but there was no sign of Boyle. Ball said, "If bishops will take on the other bishops at the other side of the chess board, does that mean that one side is Catholic and the other side is Protestant?"

"I doubt it," Gary said.

"If they are, I'd like to know which side is which. Are you twisting something in your parlour, Mr. Moriarty?"

"Do you play chess?"

"No. And I never will. No and I never will."

"Then you don't really need to know."

"I suppose not. Clubs, ha! I've seen better clubs in a dog's hat box."

"What about Boyle?" Sophie said. "I really need to find my keys."

Ball started looking through the diary again. "He also had an eleven o' clock appointment at the snooker hall," he said, "and one in the supermarket. But he can't go into the supermarket."

Sophie took the diary out of his hands. She saw that it was over twenty years old, and it was full of drawings.

"It's the wrong diary," Ball said. "The wrong diary. Those things had finger nails but no fingers."

"Do you have any idea where your brother might be?"

"I do. I do indeed. Now that you mention it, an idea is the one thing I have. Follow me."

They followed him. He led them to the snooker hall, but Boyle wasn't there. They also went to the supermarket and to the church, but they still couldn't find him.

When Ball led them down a dead-end, Sophie said, "You have no idea where he is, do you?"

"I do. I do indeed. An idea of where he is is exactly the thing I have."

"Well where is he?"

"I think he's... there." Ball pointed at a house.

"That's my house," Sophie said.

Gary said to her, "Would the keys in the lock on the front door be your keys, by any chance?"

"Oh. Yeah. Now I know what happened. I left the house earlier, but as I was walking down the garden path I remembered that I forgot my handbag. I'd left it in the hall. So I opened the door again, got my handbag and left, but I forgot to take the keys out of the door. Sorry about all the hassle. Can I offer ye a cup of tea to make up for it?"

She was hoping that Gary would say yes and Ball would say no, but they both said yes. They went inside, and when they got to the kitchen they saw that the tea had already been made. Boyle was sitting at the table.

"Didn't I tell ye I'd find him?" Ball said. "I have a sort of a telepathic link with him. Didn't I tell ye I'd find him? Didn't I tell ye? Have you lost your bath?"

"I made him say that," Boyle said. "I made him say that."

Ball ran away screaming, with his hands over his ears.

"I was looking for you because I wanted to find my keys," Sophie said to Boyle.

"I charge fifty euros for finding keys."

"I already found them. I just realised that they were on my front door."

"The keys on the door, of course. That's how I got in. Right, well in that case, let me rephrase what I just said. My charge for finding keys is fifty euros and I found your keys. Then it was a matter of you finding me, and you only did that because of my telepathic link with Ball."

She paid the money just to get rid of him, but he stayed on for another few hours anyway.

The moose's head over the fireplace has looked surprised ever since Cork's comeback against Kerry in the football semi-final on Sunday. He hasn't been this surprised since the wife's aunt told us she met a horse who used to follow Saint Patrick around the country because Saint Patrick kept giving him sugar.

Charlie's Friends

The garden is enjoying the weather. I don't think the lawns have ever been so green in the middle of August. The garden gnomes have been enjoying the rain ever since someone gave them tiny umbrellas. One of them is holding a cocktail glass, and there's an umbrella in it to keep the rain out. My great-grandfather claims to have come up with the idea of putting umbrellas in drinks. The roof of the local pub was full of leaks, and the glasses were always filling up with rain, so they put the umbrellas in the glasses. They didn't bother with umbrellas over their heads. They drank enough to numb their heads so they wouldn't notice the rain. This was their solution to most problems.

My cousin Charlie often goes for walks on the windswept land by the sea, where the fog comes out to play when the wind is gone. One day he got lost in a thick fog that felt more like smoke. He saw two people emerge from the fog. They wore black tattered clothes. Charlie wondered if he should run away, but then he realised that he knew these people. They were friends of his. He no longer wanted to run away, but he wasn't all that keen on staying with them either.

Could he really say he knows someone who, out of the blue, will dress entirely in black, having previously worn blue or red or even white, someone who'll stand in the fog with an expressionless face? One of them was holding an old ironing board that he had found in a field.

Charlie felt that this was a time to whistle to himself and try to ignore them, and try not to think too hard. If you think too hard you'll use up your brain, and then you'll be stuck in the fog. Everything will be grey and you'll wish for something black or white. When old friends emerge from the fog wearing a dark and bitter black, at least you can ask directions to the nearest thing, and when you're at a thing you can use this as a base, a strong foundation to re-build your knowledge. Aunt Joyce believes that if you stand in the fog for too long you'll get to know the spiders in your hair. And you're probably better off not knowing them, at least not by their first names, because you might just have to kill them if they start to get unruly. But if they behave you can leave them in your hair and keep them out of your head when it's empty, or else they'll fill the place with webs and it's worse than any fog. You'll have to go on holiday to clear away the cobwebs, to fill your head with brand new sights.

Charlie's friends started to walk away, and he followed them because he didn't want to get lost in the fog. They led him to safety. He was very grateful, and he invited them back to his house for a drink.

They all had a few drinks back at Charlie's house. Charlie kept talking for hours, despite the fact that his friends didn't say much. When he noticed that it was dark outside he told them they could stay in the spare room.

A week later they were still staying in the spare room and Charlie didn't know how to get rid of them. Some of their friends would come to see them late at night. When Charlie went into the room one night he saw ten eyes reflecting the light of a flickering candle. They were playing cards. They asked him to join the game and they poured him a drink. Charlie ended up playing cards and talking for hours without ever taking much notice of the fact that the others remained silent, and without ever broaching the issue of them leaving his house.

They always wore those tattered black clothes, even on trips to the supermarket. They always bought stupid things at the supermarket, things like treacle and birthday candles, but never tea, coffee, bread, milk and so forth.

They insisted on keeping the ironing board in the room, even though Charlie saw it as a playground for rats. Too big to be a rat surfboard, about the right size for a rat playground. They ironed their clothes on it.

When Charlie and his two friends went for a walk at the estuary one day the wind blew through those tattered clothes. They met a man standing outside his house. He was facing towards the water but he was looking for something in his head. He couldn't find it and he couldn't remember what it was. Charlie thought it was his wife, and his wife was doing something with a car battery.

He told them about the house next door, which had been abandoned for years because it was haunted. Charlie's friends were intrigued by this. The man told them they were welcome to explore it and to stay there for as long as they wanted. The fact that it was haunted didn't put them off or make them say, "Let's go to that house where all the clowns are instead." They got on well with the ghost, as it happened, and it did happen. These events were not rabbits pulled out of the hats of their imaginations to replace real events, dead rabbits buried in the garden. The question 'Did you electrocute that rabbit?' was never asked. They climbed creaking stairs and explored attics and old rooms. They felt at home in the place, which delighted Charlie because he didn't have to put up with them in his house any more. They went back to his place to get their ironing board and then they returned to the haunted house. They've been living there ever since. Sometimes Charlie will miss them. He'll go to visit the house and he'll bring a bottle of whiskey. They'll drink and he'll talk for hours without ever worrying about the fact that no one is listening to him.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the Olympics, especially since we started winning medals in the boxing. The wife's uncle says he once had a chance to compete in the Olympics in one of the shooting events. He had to be a good shot because of all the duels he fought. But he decided not to go to the Olympics after having an affair with the wife of a fellow competitor. He thought he'd only be presenting an alternative target for this man.

Mr. Manley-Moonlawn

I know I've often mentioned the wind and the rain in the past, but they're as difficult to avoid as the Olympics right now, so I can't really avoid mentioning them again. I'm starting to enjoy the wind and rain. It's going to take longer to warm to the Olympics. Watching shooting and gymnastics isn't as exciting as watching heavy rain. If the two sports were combined I'd definitely watch that. It would be a good TV sport, but there probably wouldn't be too many spectators in the arena.

My uncle Cyril hates having parties in his house, but sometimes his wife, Joyce, will insist on having one and inviting all of the people he considers stupid, which is nearly all of the people he knows. He told me about a party they had on an evening in the middle of July. They always invited their neighbour, Ann, to their parties. At the time of this particular one, her two sisters were staying with her, and Joyce told her to bring them along.

Cyril hated the sisters because he thought they were weird. He spent most of the night trying to avoid them, but they finally caught up with him just after eleven o' clock. Before they said anything he said, "I need to go outside for a cigarette."

They looked at each other, and then they looked back at Cyril. They spoke in unison when they said, "If you see the black dog before you see the moon, find yourself a red rose."

Cyril went out the back door and he walked to the end of the garden. He climbed the fence and kept walking through the fields. He watched the moon rising in the sky, and he thought of what the sisters had said to him. He had no intention of following their advice. He believed that only people like them followed advice given by people like them. Sane people were too cynical to be into the whole concept of advice. Cyril believes that cynicism is the only sane belief system to adopt in the modern world. Without cynicism you'd eventually go insane from the stress of all the mental effort you put into keeping the jigsaw of your delusions from falling apart. Let it fall apart because it's all rubbish (this is the only advice Cyril has ever given me).

He stopped walking when he heard the sound of an owl, and then he realised he was alone. He remembered the advice his aunt once gave him: when you're all alone, look at your toes. Then he remembered why he held advice in such low regard. He walked on again.

He kept walking until he heard the sound of a stream. He was looking forward to smoking a cigarette or two while sitting on the banks of the stream, so it came as a major disappointment, and a surprise, when he saw the two sisters there before him.

"Did you see the black dog?" the one on the left said (Cyril could never remember their names because he just couldn't be bothered trying).

"No," he said.

They whispered to each other. He didn't like the whispering. They were effectively talking about him behind his back right in front of him. He hated the thought of people talking about him behind his back, so he avoided the thought, but he couldn't avoid it when they were doing it right in front of him.

When the whispering ceased, the two sisters looked at him. The one on the left said, "This night is like a curtain and you could easily get lost in its folds."

"So I see."

"Maybe the dog got lost in it."

"These things happen."

"That doesn't necessarily mean you haven't seen the dog."

"I know."

"You could be looking at the dog when you're looking at the moon."

"That's the only reason I look at the moon."

"I think the best thing to do would be to get that red rose."

"Who's to say what's wise and unwise these days? Some of the happiest people I know put their hands into rat traps."

The one on the left nodded. The one on the right said, "Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to kiss Vincent Price?"

"No," he said. He realised why the one on the left did most of the talking. He wanted to get away from them, so he said, "Maybe I will look for that red rose."

He turned around and walked back to the garden. He stood next to the rose bushes, but just as he was about to light a cigarette he noticed that the sisters were there before him again.

"I see you've located the roses," the one on the left said.

"Yes."

"I think that was very wise."

"Undoubtedly."

"I think it would have been nicer to kiss Vincent Price when he was alive," the one on the right said. "I had a chance to act in a film with him once, but I had to pull out because I'd already committed to another film. I once acted in a film, a musical, where I had to sing the lines 'What shall we do with the lust in our heads? Should we put it in our beds? Should we keep it in a bottle?' Of course, in those days lust on screen had to be acted out in two separate beds. All it really involved was reading letters. You had to be holding a letter or a book or a small dog so people could see what you were doing with your hands. Your hands are good for you. You should bear this in mind when you're out in the snow building a snowman. Wear gloves. Give the snowman hands. Scarecrows are like summer snowmen. They should have hands too, even though they won't find much use for them. If possible, they should be given brains. They won't have much use for brains. They'll have a lot of time to think, and it won't take them long to realise that we don't have much use for brains either. Brains are important for moving your hands and sometimes your feet. Moving your hands is genuinely important, but most of the things we consider genuinely important aren't really important at all, and we rarely acknowledge the importance of our hands. People were always telling me I was a brilliant hand actress. It was my face that needed improving, and my voice. One director told me that my delivery was as reliable as his postman, and he had to shoot his postman. My best performance came in a film that was done entirely in sign language. People said it was a performance of great emotional depth. The only problem with it was that I got typecast. I kept getting offered parts where I only had to perform hand gestures. When I was being cast in those roles in radio plays I started to wonder if I had a future in acting. I clung to the belief that I did have a future because without that I'd have nothing. But then I stumbled into a career as a puppeteer, and I was able to cast the acting aside. Being a puppeteer was a much more rewarding form of hand acting than performing hand gestures on the radio. I was able to use the full emotional range of my hands. I used puppets in long blue dresses to create the illusion of waves. People said there was an ineffable sadness to my waves. Word of my performances spread. I started out in venues so small I couldn't swing my cat puppet in them, but within months I was performing in front of thousands of people. I met many great puppeteers. The most intriguing of all was Mr. Manley-Moonlawn. He died in the 1860s. He's not sure what year it was. I'd have imagined it's the sort of thing you'd remember, but he says I'm just imagining things. He could make his puppets move without using strings or putting his arms up them. He'd just stand at the side of the stage, smoking cigarettes and smiling at the audience. His puppets would smile and dance. There was something odd about his smile and the smiles of his puppets. It was as if they knew something we didn't. There was something ominous about the dance, as if they knew how it was going to end and it wouldn't be pleasant for us. This feeling would become more intense as the dance became more frantic and the smiles got wider. When the performance ended with the music suddenly ceasing and the puppets collapsing, the audience would get to their feet and applaud. They'd be swept along by a wave of relief at not having collapsed themselves. The puppets used to live in a tiny cottage in his garden. I never liked them because they kept staring at me, but I ended up spending a lot of time with them. An Austrian millionaire became fascinated by puppets. He put together a show that included all of the best puppeteers. We travelled all around Europe by train. I remember when we were in Norway and we were staying in a house in the country. As soon as we arrived we went to explore the snow-covered grounds around the house. I saw a beautiful black dog. He was walking towards us, wagging his tail, but he stopped as soon as he saw the puppets. When they saw him they stopped too. The smiles vanished from their faces. The absence of smiles was even more chilling than the widest of their smiles.

"On the following morning, Mr. Manley-Moonlawn noticed that one of his puppets was missing. We saw tiny footprints in the snow. We followed them, but after a few hundred yards they suddenly disappeared. There were no marks in the snow around this spot. We looked around, and this time we saw two black dogs. One of the puppets got sick when he saw the second dog. One of the dogs came over and sniffed what the puppet had thrown up, but it was just saw dust."

Cyril was desperate to get away. When he turned around he saw a huge black dog walking towards him and he and screamed. People came out of the house to see what was going on. He realised that what he saw wasn't actually a dog at all. The cat had been walking across the patio table. The light was on in the porch, and the cat's shadow was cast on the side of the shed. Joyce asked Cyril what was wrong.

The sister on the left said, "You saw the black dog, didn't you?"

Cyril was too embarrassed to admit that he'd screamed at a cat, so he said, "Yes."

"We have a lot to talk about," the one on the left said as she held onto his arm. Her sister held onto his other arm and they led him away into the folds of the night.

The moose's head over the fireplace is very distrustful of puppets. This could be because he once watched Pinocchio. He's very good at telling when people are lying. The signs are normally more subtle than a growing nose, but he can spot them. This makes people nervous when they try to lie in front of him, and the signs become obvious. They normally crack under the glare and they tell the truth. The wife's uncle cracked and admitted that the bruise on his face hadn't come from a stray elbow when he was playing squash, as he had claimed, but from an ashtray made airborne by a woman he'd been engaged to. She was upset when he'd been honest about her hair in comparing it to his brother's dog. In his inebriated state he thought she wouldn't mind the comparison because the dog could do a back-flip, but he was wrong.

The Comedian

The sundial in the garden doesn't get much use these days. Not that I'd be using it to tell the time even if we did have the sun. My great-grandfather won that sundial in a bet with a man in the pub. They bet on how long it would take a friend of theirs to realise that his house was on fire. My great-grandfather said it would take four days, and this guess turned out to be surprisingly accurate. It was an informed guess. In his younger days he had a brief stint as a volunteer fireman, and it normally took a few days before people noticed that the fire had found a way out of its pen in the fireplace. Things were more relaxed then They'd call the fire brigade and ask them to round up the fire. The firemen would have a meeting in the pub to discuss what to do about it. They almost always ended up deciding that they should go to investigate further, and they'd light pipes before leaving the pub. Sometimes they'd fall asleep while smoking and they'd start a fire in the pub. They'd leave that fire to attend to the other one first. But it didn't really matter. According to my great-grandfather, fires were more relaxed then too. Sometimes they'd fall asleep and you'd have to poke them with a poker to get them going again.

My cousin Alan once stole a wheelbarrow, just for a laugh. The owner of the wheelbarrow didn't find it very funny. Humour is entirely subjective. The owner, whose name was Edward, tried to get his dog to track down the thief, but all the dog found was his own tail.

Alan stole the wheelbarrow after a night at the pub with his friends. When he woke in the morning the joke didn't seem so funny. I've often had this experience with jokes. I once nearly ended up in hospital after laughing so much at a joke about a sausage, and on the following morning it seemed about as funny as attaching clothes pegs to my face. Drink can make a lot of things seem funny. In truth, drink was primarily responsible for my near-hospitalisation. It was also the reason why I attached so many clothes pegs to my face.

Alan tried to return the wheelbarrow after dark, but Edward caught him. Alan tried to explain that it was all just a joke, but Edward still didn't see the funny side. He threw some rotten apricots at Alan, who said, "What sort of a man keeps rotten apricots to throw at people with a superior sense of humour?"

"I've studied all the great comedians," Edward said, "and not one of them derived their humour from stealing wheelbarrows. Not even one."

"You've 'studied' the great comedians?"

"I've entertained the idea of becoming a comedian myself. I've entertained more than just ideas. Actual people too."

"What did they throw at you?"

"One woman threw her underwear at me. Another threw her gloves."

"And these were 'actual people', not just ideas?"

"I still have the underwear to prove it."

"What sort of a man would keep the underwear thrown at him by a woman he's never met before?"

"When a striker scores his first goal in the Premier League he keeps the articles in the papers."

"Yeah, but this isn't the Premier League. This is two five-a-side pub teams with twenty-stone players."

"The thrill of scoring is the same. And mine was a spectacular goal. I've been compared to Spike Milligan."

"You're nothing like Spike Milligan."

"Or Ronnie Barker."

"Ronnie Barker is nothing like Spike Milligan. You're like Ronnie Barker in the same way a rotten apricot is like a good apricot. You bear no relation whatsoever to Spike Milligan."

"How do you know? You've never seen my act."

"I've seen you. If your act bears any relation to you then I've seen more than enough."

"'Act' is the crucial word. Comedy performers are often very different people when they step onto the stage. Spike Milligan suffered from depression most of his life."

"Yeah, but he never suffered from being a tedious, talentless moron."

"You'd be amazed by how many people told me they nearly wet themselves after my last performance."

"Is that why the woman threw her underwear at you?"

"I'll be performing in the pub on Friday night. You can come along and see exactly why women throw their underwear at me."

Alan had no interest in seeing why women throw anything other than darts at him, but he did go to the pub on Friday night. He brought a bag of rotten tomatoes with him.

When Edward walked to the centre of the small stage he was wearing an anorak. He was holding a CD player and a briefcase, and he put these on the ground. He pulled up the hood of the anorak and covered his eyes with goggles. He pressed 'play' on the CD player and the audience heard 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' by Bonnie Tyler. Then he opened the briefcase, which was full of rotten apples. He started throwing these at Alan, who did his best to retaliate with the tomatoes. But Edward had the advantage of the surprise factor and the anorak, so he clearly won the battle. To make matters worse, the audience found it hilarious. They gave Edward a round of applause as Bonnie Tyler sang the words 'total eclipse of the heart' for the final time.

Alan was determined to get revenge. I know a man who never feels a need to get revenge on anyone because he believes that the robots will come along one day and right all wrongs. He always refers to them as 'the' robots, as if they were as real as The Backstreet Boys. Some people believe that God will do this job. Alan believes in God, but he thought there was no point in waiting for years for God to do a job that he could easily do himself today. This is why he stole the wheelbarrow again, and this time he knew it would still be funny on the following morning. He also stole a garden gnome, which he put into the wheelbarrow and wheeled it all over town. He boasted about his theft in the pub. He said he was going joyriding with the garden gnome.

Edward believes in a vengeful God who directs lightning towards people who drop chewing gum on the streets, and if you swear too much he'll make your trousers drop in public (Edward has seen this happen too many times for it to be a coincidence). Nevertheless, he thought there was no need to add to God's workload when he could do the job himself. He believed that a God who makes people's trousers drop would approve of the plan he came up with: throw a custard pie in Alan's face while he's boasting to all of his friends in the pub and then break the windows in his car.

The other drinkers cheered and applauded when he threw the pie in Alan's face. When the applause died down he said, "Now I'm going to break the windows in your car."

Edward left the pub, and Alan followed him out. All of the other drinkers followed Alan. Edward had a brick waiting for him outside. He picked it up and went to Alan's car. Alan begged him not to break the windows. "I'm sorry about the wheelbarrow and the garden gnome," he said. "I promise I'll return them as soon as possible."

Edward said, "I won't break the windows if you drop your trousers right now in front of everyone."

"Humiliating someone for borrowing your wheelbarrow isn't fair."

"Suit yourself."

Edward raised the brick. Alan said, "Wait. I'll do it."

He dropped his trousers. All of the on-lookers laughed, and then they applauded.

"God works in mysterious ways," Edward said.

Edward's comedy career went downhill after this. People saw him as the straight man in a double act with Alan. The only way Edward could get a laugh was by dropping his trousers, and even then it wasn't much of a laugh. It was difficult to keep finding excuses for dropping them.

The moose's head over the fireplace appreciates good comedy. He never laughs, but you can see a faint smile when Father Ted or The Simpsons is on. He's smiled faintly at plenty of unintentional comedy moments over the years, like the time one of our guests at a party sang a song about an amorous otter. The singer had a terrible voice. It was more sad than funny, until his trousers fell down as he attempted a high note.