The Witch

The word 'snow' has been mentioned on the weather forecast, but the chances of a serious snowfall are unlikely. If you think of the leaves as big brown and yellow snowflakes then it's like a blizzard outside. I don't like the idea of making a snowman out of big brown and yellow snowflakes.

My cousin Ronan once dressed up as Dracula on Halloween and he went to a pub where a fancy dress contest was being held. The first prize was free drink for the rest of the night. The winners were three men who dressed up as sheep on a trampoline. You had to imagine the trampoline.

When Ronan was going home he noticed the initials 'WS' a wall. This stood for 'Witch Sarah'. During the week leading up to Halloween each year she'd appear around the town and leave her initials behind. She'd been appearing for over eighty years. She wore a long white coat with red tinsel wrapped around her neck. On her head she had a wide-brimmed hat with flowers on it, and she wore dark sunglasses with big lenses. People said she seemed to float, and many people believed she was a ghost.

Ronan noticed that the paint was still wet, so she must have been there recently. At the other end of the street he found another WS, and this one had the initials 'AH' just beneath it.

He followed the trail of graffiti, and he came across a man called George, who was peeping around a corner. George had inherited a huge house and a fortune from an uncle, and these allowed him to fulfil his dream of living in a hotel. He converted the house into a hotel and he hired staff to work there, but he was horrified at the thought of guests staying overnight. Only his brother, Andrew, was allowed stay there.

George turned around when he heard footsteps behind him. He got a shock when he saw Dracula, but he soon realised it was just Ronan.

"Are you looking for Witch Sarah too?" Ronan said.

"I'm not sure I want to meet her. Or AH."

He told Ronan about a recurring nightmare he'd been having for years. It involved tiny letters running around his feet, forming themselves into words like 'fork' that would attack his feet. He hated seeing 'WS' around the town. And then someone started writing 'AH' near 'WS'. Those letters could form the word 'wash', and his feet wouldn't like that. He didn't fear the letters themselves, but he thought they represented something, that his nightmares were warning him of a real danger, or else someone who knew about his nightmares was using the letters as a threat.

Ronan and George walked on, and soon they came across a man spray-painting 'AH' on the side of a bus shelter. It was George's brother, Andrew Houndmadrig.

"I should have known," George said. "You knew about my nightmare. You did this just to scare me."

"This has nothing to do with your stupid nightmare about those stupid letters and your stupid feet. This is about love."

"Love?"

"I love Witch Sarah. She's been appearing to me in my dreams for the past week, and I fell in love with her. She loves me too. Last night we kissed. My initials are my way of expressing my feelings for her."

"Who is she?" Ronan said.

"I don't know. I never thought of asking her that in my dreams."

"Maybe we can find out now."

They kept following the trail of graffiti. It led them to the edge of town, and they saw her there. She was painting 'WS' on a stone wall. They followed her when she left the town. She walked up the avenue towards George's hotel, and she disappeared around the back.

"Maybe she's a ghost who's haunting the hotel," George said. "And now she's started haunting your dreams as well."

They went into the house through the front door. They tip-toed down the hall and they listened carefully, but the house was in silence. They searched the rooms on the ground floor, and they finally found her in the kitchen. George turned on the light, and he recognised her despite the hat and the sunglasses. It was Sarah, one of his maids. "So you're Witch Sarah," he said to her.

"Yes. Well, sort of. My great-grandmother was the first Witch Sarah. Herself and her best friend dug a grave for a garden gnome one Halloween. They invented Witch Sarah and they blamed the grave on her. People were sceptical, so my great-grandmother dressed up as Witch Sarah to convince them. It became an annual event, and then it became a family tradition."

"How did you manage to get into my dreams?" Andrew said.

"You go sleepwalking every night, and that's where I bump into you. We often have conversations while you're still asleep."

"And we kissed."

"In your dreams."

"Well yeah, quite possibly. But I'm sure those scenes in my dreams were based on real events."

"That's total fiction."

"But it felt so real. You were wearing a red dress and a green coat at the time."

A look of surprise came over Sarah's face, as if she just realised that it might be true, but she said, "No, it was all in your dreams."

"What would you be doing out and about in the middle of the night?" George said to Sarah.

"I go to Neville's hotel to meet Eva, one of his maids. She's been trying to influence his dreams to make him pay the staff more."

Neville owned a hotel that was a few hundred yards away down the road. His hotel had people staying in it, but he hardly ever attracted new guests. Some of the old ones had been there for years. The hotel was a grand old mansion that had seen better days, and the guests liked the dilapidated look. To stay there you had to abide by certain rules. You needed to collect tokens to use the bath, and you got the tokens by taking photos of birds and wild animals in the woods. The guests had to use the hotel's camera, which had been in use since the sixties. They had to develop the photos themselves in the hotel's dark room.

George and Neville didn't get on because they saw each other as rivals, even though neither of them were likely to take business from the other. George liked the idea of influencing Neville's dreams, so he asked Sarah if he could go with her. She didn't want to say no to her boss, especially one who was paying her to work in a hotel where there wasn't any work.

Andrew, Ronan and George went with Sarah to Neville's hotel. Eva let them in through the front door. Andrew was shocked to see that she was wearing a red dress beneath a green coat.

"You're the one I kissed," he said to her.

Sarah said, "She wanted to see you close up, so I brought her to the hotel at night to see you while you were sleepwalking."

"I've admired you from afar for so long," Eva said to Andrew.

"Really?" Andrew said.

"Yeah. Through a telescope."

Neville came down the stairs. George looked for a hiding place, but then he noticed that Neville was walking in his sleep.

When Neville saw Sarah he sang to her, and she blushed. She was in love with him, and this is why she was so eager to visit his hotel at night. He had fallen in love with her in his dreams.

He started dancing with her, but he stopped when he saw George. "Oh no," he said. "Not this nightmare again."

"Why is it a nightmare?" George said.

"It's a nightmare alright, but you're supposed to be dressed as an acorn."

"An acorn?"

"As an acorn, and you're inside it with a penguin. The penguin wants you to get out. He keeps biting... Wait a minute. This is real."

He was angry at first, but he realised that Sarah was real, and she was really in love with him. He put a record on the record player and he danced with her. Andrew danced with Eva. Ronan and George were left together on the sidelines. After an uncomfortable silence, George said, "Will we wake the other maids?"

"Yes," Ronan said. "Let's do that."

George turned up the volume on the record player. Soon all of the staff and the guests were awake, and a party inevitably ensued. Ronan ended up consuming free drink until dawn, and dancing with a maid who didn't speak much English.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been trying on his Halloween costume. He'll be a bloodthirsty pirate, with a stuffed parrot on his antlers. The wife's uncle has warned about Halloween costumes that are too realistic. A friend of his dressed up as a ghost one Halloween, and he was so convincing that a real ghost found him attractive and started kissing him. The real ghost was a pirate. At least he said he was a ghost.

The Snails

There are always plenty of spectacular sights to see in autumn, whether it be the beautiful colours of the trees or the people playing basketbull in the fields.

My cousin Hector used to race snails when he was young, but he nearly always beat them, sometimes with a stick. His twin daughters, Alice and Grace, tried making the snails race against each other because they didn't get any enjoyment from hitting a snail, and the thrill of running faster than a snail faded fairly quickly.

They used to make a snail called Stinky race against his friend, Chocolate. Hector's brother, Albert, was looking after the twins one day when they decided to have a snail race. Albert got bored of it after ten minutes, but it took another half-hour before the twins started thinking about ways of speeding up the athletes.

"Why don't we just guess which one of them is going to win," Grace said, "based on their performance so far."

"How would you tell which one of them is doing better?" Alice said. "Neither of them has moved."

"We could guess which one of them would do better if they moved."

"How would you tell that?"

"Just wait until a little birdie comes and tells you something about it."

"I saw a dead rabbit. Would that do?"

"No, it has to be a little birdie."

After waiting for an hour, Grace said, "Okay, let's go and see the rabbit."

Alice took them to the field where she saw the dead rabbit, but it was gone.

"Are you sure he was dead?" Grace said.

"Of course I'm sure. Someone must have taken it."

"Who'd take a dead rabbit?"

"Maybe the monster did it." Alice blamed everything on the monster, but he spent most of his time punching the garden shed.

As they considered what had happened to the dead rabbit, they heard a brass band. They followed the sound, and it led them to the garden of one of their neighbours, Irene.

Her sunflowers had been sinking, so she hired the brass band to play to them, and they started rising again when they heard the music. "They drooped after my niece, Chloe, and her friends stared at them," Irene said to Alice, Grace and Albert. "Chloe and her friends are big into fashion. They're always coming up with new looks to compete with the rival groups and gangs in the area. Their latest look is mostly grey with bits of blue. They stare at the sunflowers when they have nothing else to do. The thing about it is, and I'd say this again if they asked me because I know only too well they weren't listening the first time I said it, and I used to repeat these things for them but I just don't bother now because they don't listen then either. I just say what I have to say and then I say to myself, 'You've said it now. That's your job done.' And if they come back with bits of bark in their hair I can say I told ye to do this or not to do that, and they'll listen then."

"Do they really have bits of bark in their hair?" Albert said.

"Oh yeah. It was put there, on purpose. By so-called experts. If they were hair stylists, I'm Pete Sampras. 'Don't trust the man with the top hat' is what I said to them. Would you trust a man with a top hat?"

"If I met him in the pub or in the shop, no. I wouldn't immediately trust anyone I met in a pub or in a shop."

"They immediately trust everyone. If someone said to them, 'This is going to be in your hair after it dies,' they'd say, 'No problem. What's its name?'"

Chloe and her friends arrived in the garden after spending a few hours being fashionable next to a pond. Irene wanted to keep them away from the revitalised sunflowers, so she suggested going for a walk. Alice, Grace and Albert went with them, and so did the brass band.

As they walked through the fields, Chloe spoke in a sad voice about the art of space and space art, and how it was their destiny to think about these things and make films in dark rooms with their friends and unappealing friends of friends, and walk across the moors in search of savages, finding things that will catch a ride on the wind. They'll meet someone better than them, and they'll wish they'd thought of making that person, of defining their look, their personality, teaching them the way of the world. They once met a man called Porter who said, "I'm on my way to get the giants," and for some unfathomable reason everyone wanted to spend time with him. She spoke about how she gave her own names to places and land marks. She often went to a place called 'Stop that fox' and there she closed her eyes. She tries to forget about the man who was looking for the giants. He eventually found the giants. Chloe and her friends met him one day and he was with a group of tall people. "Didn't I tell ye I'd find them?" he said. "Didn't I tell ye?"

Alice, Grace and Albert saw a man standing in a field and they guessed that he was Porter because of the tall people standing behind him. There was a crowd of people standing behind the tall people. This made Chloe and her friends even more depressed because they had attracted no new followers.

Chloe said hello to Porter. He said, "Didn't I tell ye? Didn't I tell ye?"

There was a small field near the lake that Chloe called 'Lying at Biro Burry'. This was a long way away from the shed where you'd find Biro Burry, where they'd go to lie to him. Whenever she wanted to think in peace she'd say, "Let's go to Lying at Biro Burry." When she was sad, one of her friends would say, "Let's go lying to Biro Burry," and this is what one of them said when they were confronted by Porter and his expanding band of followers.

They went to Biro Burry's shed and Porter followed them, followed closely by his followers. On the way they met Biro's girlfriend, Justine. They asked her where she was going and she said, "I'm not going to Rory's field to see if he got his clock down from the tree."

Rory had been working on a robot dog but he decided to make it into a clock instead. When you wanted to know the time you had to call the clock. It understood commands like 'sit' and 'stay'. It hated being turned back in winter.

"So where are you going?" Chloe said to Justine.

"I'm... going to see Biro."

"Aren't you going the wrong way?"

"I'm..." She always pulled a carrot out of her pocket when she was stuck for something to say. She took the carrot out of her coat pocket and gave it to Chloe. "Have a carrot," she said, and then she ran away.

There was a crowd of people at the shed to see Biro Burry's eye-gulls. Chloe and her friends told him lies like 'Your fountain is on fire, Biro Burry'. Chloe was a very good liar when she was eating something, so she started eating the carrot and she said, "Justine has gone to Rory's field to see if he got his clock down from the tree."

Biro believed this, and he was furious. He suspected that Justine was up to something with Rory. He set off towards the tree. The crowd of people there to see his eye-gulls followed him. So did Chloe and her friends, Porter and his followers, Alice, Grace, Albert, Irene and the brass band.

When they got to the tree the clock was on the ground. Rory and Jane were in the tree, and they were kissing. They tried to act casual when they saw the crowd approaching below. Biro was just about to say something when Alice pointed at the ground and said, "Look, it's Stinky and Chocolate."

The two snails were about a yard away from the tree, and both of them were clearly intent on reaching it first. Everyone became engrossed in the race between the snails. A lot of bets were placed. Thousands of euros were riding on the outcome of the race.

It took another hour for Stinky to get to the tree, according to the clock. Chocolate reached it about a minute later. The brass band played when the race was over. By this time, Jane and Rory had come down from the tree. Biro hadn't noticed because he was so engrossed in the race, and he was delighted because he had backed the winner. When he remembered why he had come to the tree he asked Justine what she had been doing with Rory. "Have a carrot," she said, and she took a carrot out of her pocket. This seemed to satisfy his curiosity.

The moose's head over the fireplace spends a lot of time staring at the various clocks on the wall opposite him. We change the clocks on a regular basis to keep him entertained. The latest one is a cuckoo clock, but I've only seen the cuckoo once. Something else will always come out in place of the cuckoo. Sometimes you'll see people who keep scissors down their trousers. At eight o' clock last night I saw a miner who was holding a fox by the scruff of the neck.

The Red Spot

I used some of the apples from the orchard to make cider. I'll end up drinking all of it myself. Everyone else refuses to even taste it because it made me walk into a wall. For me, that would be a reason to drink it.

My cousin Charlie once took up painting as a hobby. He started out painting landscapes and still lifes, but he soon got bored with these. One night in a dream he saw a red spot, and when he woke up he tried to paint it. He spent the rest of that day painting many different versions of it, but he could never get it to look like the red spot he saw in his mind.

Over the following weeks he painted red spots on many different surfaces, and he tried different types of paint. He tried drawing it with ink on paper and cardboard, but it never looked right.

His cousin Jessica is an art teacher, and he told her about the trouble he was having. She said, "I know someone who might be able to help you. He's an artist who's worked with spots before."

"I'll try anything that might help," Charlie said.

"He's from Louth. Is that a problem?"

"No."

"Good. I'll give him a call."

"He doesn't have some sort of a problem, does he?"

"No. Don't forget that you're the one with the problem. He's the one who can help you."

"Right. But he's okay, is he?"

"No, he's not okay, but if you asked me that question about anyone on the planet I'd say 'No, he's not okay', or 'No, she's not okay'. So you're really finding out a lot more about me than you are about him."

"Right. I already know the answer to the question 'Are you okay?'."

"I'm fine."

The artist's name was Eric. He had come up with sixteen different versions of himself. There was only one 'Me' with a capital 'M', one 'I' with a capital 'I'. So when he wrote 'i kick crutches' it wasn't really a fair reflection of his personality.

He used to go to the local wig-swapping club every Friday night. He'd get a wig to wear for the following week. One of them used to be a fox.

When Charlie and Jessica went to see him he was holding a glass of brandy and he was wearing a wild red wig. This wig was perfect for an 'i' called Myles. Eric had been trying to keep Myles in check because of his unpredictable behaviour, but the wig allowed Myles to bloom. On a typical day Myles could seduce women, cut down trees, lecture cows on the dangers of wearing other people's clothes, and throw his shoes at the people who'd least like to have a shoe thrown at them.

Jessica explained the problem Charlie was having with the red spot. Eric, or Myles, listened attentively, and then he said, "Follow me."

He led them through his garden, over the fence and into a field, down a hill, across a small stone bridge over a stream and up a winding path on the side of a steep hill. He never stopped talking as he walked. This is an extract from what he said: "I often watch them go and then they're gone and the sky is grey or brown and they shove things up their noses, mostly air. They're as bad as the dogs I chased and I keep everything I write in a suitcase I found. I once stuffed all my clothes into it when I had the beard of a composer because of a beard-swapping club I once went to and I tried to compose something as sad and beautiful as brown paper but I lost my composure and they had to take me to the hospital but all I remember is that my legs were up in the air when I was sure I had left them on the ground with the dog."

He knocked on the door of a small cottage. A man opened the door almost immediately. He was holding a bottle of brandy, and he re-filled Myles's glass. "Much obliged," Myles said. The man closed the door again without saying a word.

Myles walked on, with Charlie and Jessica close behind. When they came to a tree in the middle of a field Myles said to it, "I don't know about you but I get the distinct impression that whoever's pulling our strings has gone a bit electric."

He waited for a response, and he could have been waiting there for hours, but he saw a woman in a black ball gown. She was holding a glass and a bottle of brandy. He went over to her and she re-filled his glass. "Much obliged," he said. Then he chased a cat around the field, saying, "Why aren't you wearing your leotard?"

Charlie said to Jessica, "Why did you tell me he was from Louth and neglect to mention that he's completely insane?"

"I always thought he's insane because he's from Louth."

"I know lots of people from Louth and none of them are insane."

"Yeah. He's the only person from Louth I know, so..."

"So everything you know about people from Louth is based on him."

"Yeah. But there are sixteen of him, and all sixteen are insane to some extent. Although the real Eric isn't really any more insane than an average person."

"We need to get rid of the wig to restore the real Eric. If we keep following him around he's bound to let his guard down eventually."

The cat climbed a tree. "Make sure he puts on his leotard," Myles said to the tree, and then he walked away.

He led Charlie and Jessica to the banks of the river just outside the town, where the anglers sat next to their rods and a waiter brought them drinks. The waiter re-filled Myles's glass. The sun had just gone down.

"I heard a funny story once," Myles said. "At the time I was busy saying 'Why aren't those two crows married?' but I noticed that someone was trying to tell me a funny story. It concerned a plumber and a robin..."

Charlie saw a chance to take the wig and release Eric. They went over to an angler, who was happily drunk. Jessica said to him, "Can we borrow your rod to steal a wig?"

"Of course you can."

Charlie took the rod and he stood behind Myles. He slowly lowered the hook onto the wig, and then very slowly raised it. The wild strands of hair became entangled in the hook, and the wig rose above Myles's head. When he looked up and saw it escaping he said, "Come back here. Come back here at once."

He jumped and tried to catch it. Charlie moved the rod to one side and the wig flew out over the river. The hook lost its hold on the hair, and the wig fell into the water. They watched the current take it away.

Charlie, Jessica and Myles (who was starting to feel more like Eric) ran to a bridge. Charlie was going to use the fishing rod to stop the wig as it floated by beneath him, but he couldn't do anything because he was transfixed by the sight. The red wig in the dark water was exactly like the red spot in his mind. The wig disappeared under the bridge. They went to the other side and watched it fade away into the night.

Eric wasn't sorry to see it go because he was glad to have Myles confined once more. At the next meeting of the wig-swapping club he had to tell the wig's owner the story of how he lost it. "This isn't because I'm from Louth," he said.

Charlie no longer felt a need to paint a red spot because he felt as if he had created it in a work of art. His subconscious mind had suggested the image of the red spot, and he believed that his subconscious mind had led him into a situation where he'd put a red wig into a river.

The moose's head over the fireplace once wore a red wig at one of our Halloween parties. We told people he was half man, half beast, and he could see into people's souls and make them reveal their secrets. One man broke down in tears in front of the moose's head and he confessed to having an affair with his boss's mother. It should be pointed out that he had consumed a large quantity of my homemade beer when he made this admission.

The Monkey

There's a mouse in the shed. If I stand completely still I can hear him dancing. My great-grandfather used to hunt mice. He once said he caught one that was as big as his head, but he still tried to eat it.

My Aunt Bridget looked out the window one afternoon and said, "I think I'll wear the grey hat today."

"Didn't you wear the grey one yesterday?" Uncle Harry said.

"In that case I'll wear the brown one."

"You wore the brown one yesterday too."

"Right... Okay... If anyone wants me I'll be in the glasshouse."

She went to the glasshouse to clear her head. She had hired a poet to make sense of her life, but he only made things worse. She couldn't understand any of it. As she stood in the glasshouse she tried her best to empty her head of all thoughts, but she couldn't help noticing a commotion coming from the shed. She went there, and when she opened the door she saw a monkey inside. The place was in a complete mess.

Her neighbour, Charlie, once went on a diet to lose weight. He tried exercise as well, but it was all a waste of time. He lost three stone just by standing in the garden during a storm. The monkey clung onto Charlie's neck in the gale-force wind, but his grip was eventually loosened, and he was blown away. Charlie put a crow on his shoulder to stop the monkey from getting back, so the monkey decided to take up residence in Harry and Bridget's shed.

As Bridget surveyed the scene in the shed, the muddle in her mind was worse than ever. She knew she needed to focus on one thing, to put all her energy into it, and that thing would be restoring the monkey to his rightful place on Charlie's back.

To do this she needed to get rid of the crow. The first idea she came up with was to make it fall asleep, and she knew just how to do it. One of her friends, Joan, had a very boring voice. An experiment had proven that five minutes of listening to her talk was more likely to bring unconsciousness than being hit by a tranquilliser dart. The scientist only decided it was an experiment after he'd fired the dart, and he'd only decided he was a scientist after he'd given up being a man who steals tranquilliser guns.

Bridget took Joan around to Charlie's place. He was in his garden with the crow. Joan started talking to the crow. She said, "I once knew a crow who lived in a bin. I didn't know him very well. It wasn't the fact that he was a crow that stopped me from getting to know him. It had more to do with the fact that he lived in a bin. I remember hearing music coming from the bin once. I think it was his birthday. I was going to say something to him about that, but I didn't. I probably should have said 'Happy Birthday'. I heard music coming from a waiter once. I was going to ask him if it was his birthday, but I didn't. Have you ever accidentally ingested a buttercup? Have you ever worn shoes that you mistakenly believed were given to you by God? When I was standing in the rain I didn't know what to do with the sugar, so I left it in my handbag..."

After listening to her talk for ten minutes the crow was inching towards sleep, but Charlie got there first. When he started to fall forwards the crow tightened his grip on Charlie's shoulder, pulling him back from the brink of sleep. His scream brought a full-stop to Joan's speech. She was going to ask him if it was his birthday, but she didn't.

Bridget considered using a scarecrow to scare the crow away, but she couldn't find one that was more frightening than Charlie. The scientist conducted tests on the scarecrows to prove that they were less likely to scare a crow than Charlie was.

Bridget's grandchildren, Daisy and Graham, came up with a solution. Years of accidentally dropping food on the ground had given them an understanding of crows. Bridget took them to see Charlie and the crow one evening. He was standing in his garden again, providing a perch for the bird. Daisy and Graham walked all around the garden. They ate crisps, and after every few steps they'd pretend to stumble and drop some of the crisps on the ground.

Charlie walked back towards his house but the crow remained where he was for a few seconds before falling towards the ground. He flew away before hitting the ground. He tried to eat as much of the crisps as he could before the other crows arrived.

Before Charlie reached the door of his house, the monkey was back on his back. Charlie was glad to be re-united with his old companion. He was scared of the crow, and he kept the monkey there to keep the crow away.

The moose's head over the fireplace was once confronted by a stag's head, which was resting on the head of a man called Dinny. He had put up several elaborate scarecrows around his farm, and they were good at keeping crows away, but they attracted a lot of people who wanted to see them. So Dinny used to walk around his farm with the stag's head on his head and a shotgun in his hands, just to frighten people. He liked his new image. When he came to our Christmas party a few years ago he was wearing the stag's head. Thankfully he didn't have the shotgun.

Women

Summer started after it was over and now it's well and truly gone. The wife's uncle says he once went through a marriage like that. He can't remember the name of the woman he was married to, or not married to -- he's not entirely sure (probably 'not' if he can't remember her name). All he remembers about her is that she didn't like one of his legs, and he thought that one was his best leg.

My cousin Albert was standing in the park, just admiring the sights and sounds and smells of a beautiful August evening. He noticed that there were some women behind him. He estimated that there were three of them, but he didn't count them. They might have counted themselves. There's safety in knowing how many of you there are. One of them was standing on one leg. He knows she has two legs because he counted them to make sure.

When they were in a kitchen twenty minutes later the place was packed. Albert estimated that there must have been over fifteen women in there with him. Some of them were drinking tea. Some were standing and some were sitting, or standing on no legs. There was a painting of a clown on the wall. He had three eyes. One of them was in his mouth. He was holding reading glasses with three lenses.

One of the women started singing. Her legs automatically responded to the song. Albert didn't count her legs, but she must have had at least four to perform the dance she did. When she finished the song and dance the other women applauded. They must have had at least forty hands to create such a sound, though some of them probably had more than two hands.

By the time they got to the lake there were over fifty women with Albert. He thought it was time to whittle down the crowd, so he ran away through the fields. He loved running through the long grass as the sun set. He was so caught up in it that he paid no attention to the women, and when he finally stopped and turned around there was no one there. He felt lonely. He walked on with his head bowed. After the sun had gone down he found two women in the middle of a huge field.

The women were Vicky and Amanda. Vicky was grateful to her clothes for the way they always followed her around, but she was afraid that one day she'd take a right turn and they'd go left. This is why she never made any sudden movements. Her best friend was Amanda who was bored of her toes so she decided to get snails to be her toes instead. She trained the snails to move in formation and she followed them around. This suited Vicky because Amanda moved very slowly after her toes.

When Vicky's handbag was stolen they chased the thief. It took about two seconds for him to disappear from view, but they kept moving slowly onwards. They were still chasing him when Albert found them in the field. He promised to help them catch the thief. He enjoyed following them around. Fifty women was too many, and zero was too few, but two was just about right.

They never caught the thief, but he did return the bag. His dreams were haunted by the thought of the two women moving slowly yet inexorably forward. Vicky and Amanda were glad to have Albert's company because he gave them a sense of protection from thieves. He felt safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't multiply, though Amanda's toes probably would.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't seem terribly interested when the wife's niece shows him her favourite snails. One of them is called Bertie. She says she found him when he was stealing tomatoes from Japanese tourists.