The Herd

I still haven't solved the mystery of the hole in the garden. My great-grandfather once started digging a hole with the intention of building a mountain next to it. He was sleep-walking at the time. He only managed a sort of a molehill before he went back to bed. In his dream he saw people skiing down that molehill.

My cousin Craig plays in a brass band with his friends, Bill, Shane and Kenny. When they first started the band they all played the tuba, but there wasn't much of an audience for an all-tuba band. So now Craig plays the trumpet, Bill plays the French horn, Shane plays the trombone and Kenny plays the tuba. They asked Nick, their former music teacher, to help them, and he agreed to give them lessons in the park in the evening. He said he needed an open space for his teaching methods.

There was really only one method, and this was walking behind them as they played and making them move forward by prodding them with a cattle prod. The frustration of being unable to use a cattle prod in school meant that he over-used it outside of school hours.

The band hated being herded like cattle, but they saw a way to herd him instead. They used to practise in a field because this was one of the few places where there was no one to threaten them with violence unless they stopped playing. While they were out in the field one day they noticed a sheepdog listening to the music, and he seemed to be reacting to the sound. They found that they could control his movements with their music.

They got a loan of the dog for one of their lessons with Nick. When he started prodding them with the cattle prod, they played sounds that instructed the dog to herd Nick. Nick was afraid of the dog. He kept looking back as he prodded the band, and he let himself be herded around the park by the dog. The band were effectively herding themselves, but it was better than being herded by Nick. No one was prepared to accept defeat, so throughout that lesson the band were followed by Nick who was followed by the dog.

It happened again on the following evening. Before the end of this lesson a woman called Monica walked through the park. When she was looking at Nick he became much more liberal in his use of the cattle prod, thinking it would impress her, but it didn't. She walked on as fast as she could, and he stopped using the cattle prod. The band could tell that he was downhearted, and they figured out what was going on.

Craig asked him about it and he told them he was in love with Monica. She loved earthworms. She loved feeling them on her fingers. It took him a long time to get his head around this, and he spent a lot of time thinking about her as he tried to understand her love of earthworms. He kept talking about her, but most of what he said was a variation of the following: "That's weird. She's weird. That's just weird."

Whenever he spent that much time talking about a woman he always fell in love with her, and it was no different with Monica. He wanted to impress her, but he had no idea how he'd go about doing this. He didn't think that flowers or chocolates would work on her, and he thought it might look weird if he gave her earthworms. Craig pointed out that using the cattle prod on a brass band hadn't worked either. Nick said, "I know a woman who'd be impressed by that, but she's weird."

"What if we found a way you could impress her?" Bill said. "Would you stop using the cattle prod on us then?"

"Of course," Nick said. "Assuming ye stop herding me with the dog."

"That goes without saying."

"But how will ye find out how to impress her?"

"Spying," Craig said. "We're going to have to spend some time spying on a woman again."

The band followed her when she left her house on the following evening. She went to the theatre, where a dance company were performing. The conclusion they drew from this was that an ability to dance would impress her, but they didn't think that this would be of much use to Nick.

On the next evening she went to see the dance show again. They decided to wait until she left the theatre, and see where she went from there.

They waited in the pub at the other side of the street. They sat at a table near the window so they could see the front door of the theatre. They saw the audience leave the building at ten o' clock. Monica turned left when she came out of the door. They waited until she disappeared around the corner at the end of the street before they started following her. When they turned the corner she was standing there, waiting for them. "Why are ye following me?" she said.

"We're not," Craig said.

"I'm not stupid. And ye're not very good at following people."

"It's not what you think it is. I have no idea what you think it is, but it's almost certainly not that. We're following you because Nick is in love with you. We want to figure out how he'd go about impressing you, because if you fall in love with him he'll stop prodding us with a cattle prod."

"How could I fall in love with someone who prods people with a cattle prod?"

"He will stop if you fall in love with him. I think you should consider doing it for that reason alone."

"It's not the sort of thing you can choose."

"But you have so much in common with him. He's a fantastic dancer."

"Nick? A dancer?"

"Dancing is his life. Music and dance are intertwined."

"He doesn't look like a dancer."

"Looks can be deceptive," Kenny said.

"That's right," Craig said. "Nick will be performing one of his dance routines in the park on Friday evening. You should come along."

"I certainly will," Monica said. "Thanks for telling me."

The band went to see Nick to tell him about his performance. He invited them in when they called at his house, but they thought it would be better to break the news outside. This would give them a chance to get away. He went inside to get his cattle prod when he heard that he was due to perform a dance in public. He chased them all around the garden with the cattle prod, but they were no longer confined to the herd of a band so they could split up, and he couldn't catch any of them.

He stopped chasing them when he got tired. Craig told him that if he really wanted to impress her he should have a go at the dance. Nick thought about it for a while and he said, "I suppose I do really want to impress her."

"I know just the man who can help," Bill said. "His name is Aidan. He's a dancer."

Aidan called his dancing 'folk dancing' because he thought he was continuing an ancient tradition. He'd dance and allow spirits to enter his body. All of the people who used to live near his house in the past would crowd into him and have a barn dance, each one of them using his legs. This made him look maniacal when he danced. He let them in when he was carving wood as well. He'd carve at a frantic pace, and the end result would be a mess because all of the people inside him would be trying to use his hands at once. It wasn't advisable to let so many people use his hands when he was holding a knife.

Aidan helped Nick come up with his own dance routine. Nick thought he looked like his grandfather scaring away the crows, but he'd rather look like his grandfather than like a dancer, so he agreed to perform this routine in public.

The brass band would provide the musical accompaniment for Nick's performance in the park. Monica was the only member of audience when he began his routine, but it didn't take long for a crowd to gather. Nick soon realised that the band weren't really playing to accompany his dancing. Their music was controlling the movements of the dog, who was dancing next to him. The band had spent most of the day teaching the dog how to dance. Nick was convinced that they were only doing this to make him look like an idiot, and he couldn't wait to get hold of his cattle prod. But when he finished his dance he realised that the crowd liked his performance, and Monica loved it.

The band enjoyed it as well. Making Nick look like an idiot is what made it so enjoyable for them. This was payback for all of the times he'd used the cattle prod on them. For his next performance they dressed the dog up in a pirate's costume. They could see that Nick hated dancing with a dog dressed up as a pirate, but Monica's enthusiasm for his dancing stopped him from using the cattle prod.

The moose's head over the fireplace still looks disgruntled after having to endure two hours of Paul's company on Saturday evening. Paul is one of our neighbours. He started telling the moose's head about people he knows who get bored with their heads and they try on other people's heads. They don't physically make the switch -- that would be something you should only do under medical supervision. It was more of a spiritual thing. Then he spent the next two hours talking about the funny noise his knee makes, which, he claims, is also a spiritual thing.

The Silver Pen

The days are getting longer and the weather is ideal for long walks around the garden in the evening. The dog is full of energy these days. He loves to run in circles around inanimate objects, as if he's mocking them. He's run around every tree in the orchard. According to the wife's aunt, the trees think he has unresolved issues from his youth.

My cousin Charlie once bought a briefcase at a car boot sale. His cousin Rachel's amateur dramatics society were doing a play in which one of the characters has to throw a briefcase at a work colleague. To prevent real violence, they needed a soft briefcase. So when Charlie found the soft briefcase at the car boot sale he bought it.

When he opened it at home he found a silver pen inside. He started writing with it, and he found that his handwriting was much better than it had ever been before. He often wrote with the new pen just to admire his new handwriting. He'd forget about what he was actually writing. When he'd read through it later he was always amazed at some of the things he'd written, lines like 'I asked her if she had made any plans to let go of her suitcase'. He started to wonder if these were the words and the handwriting of a past owner of the pen. He wrote some more with it. He thought that if the pen really was possessed by one of its former owners he'd be able to gain an insight into this person's life through the words produced by the pen.

Most of what he wrote was nonsense, but sometimes coherent thoughts would peep through. It felt as if they had all emanated from the same mind, and Charlie was sure that this mind wasn't his. He was able to identify recurring characters. He was sure that the woman with the suitcase was the same person who wrote to a newspaper to complain about the quality of tea bags. She was the most prominent character in the texts.

Every evening he spent an hour writing without paying attention to the meaning of the words, and then he'd read through what he'd written. After a few weeks he felt as if he knew the former owner of the pen, and the characters mentioned in the text seemed vivid. His mind would wander during the day at work and he'd have imaginary conversations with the woman who complained about the tea bags. She often complained to him about the weather or about Antarctic explorers. He thought she'd be offended if he disagreed with her, so he went along with everything she said.

One evening as he was reading through what he'd written he realised that there was an address in the text. It was a house in a town that was just a ten-minute drive away from where he lived.

He went there on the following evening. The house was on a quiet street. He rang the doorbell and a middle-aged man opened the door. Charlie got the feeling that this was the person whose thoughts were invading his writings.

"This might sound a bit odd," Charlie said, "but..."

"It worked! It worked!" the man said. "This is about the pen, isn't it?"

"It is."

"It worked! It worked!"

The man introduced himself as Phil, and he invited Charlie in for a cup of tea. Charlie followed him into the living room, where a woman was sitting on a settee. When Charlie entered the room she put the tea cup on a coffee table and she stood up to shake his hand. Phil introduced her as Marianne. Charlie was sure that this was the woman who complained about the tea bags.

"Do you have the pen with you?" Phil said to Charlie.

Charlie took the pen out of his coat pocket. There was another silver pen on the table. Phil picked it up and held it next to Charlie's pen. The two were identical.

"These once belonged to my grandfather," Phil said. "There were another two in the set. All four pens were exactly the same. My grandfather would never say where he got them, but he often said there was a strong connection between the four. He said that if one went missing it would find its way back to its brothers eventually, as long as those brothers were in use. I inherited the pens. I had no intention of putting my grandfather's claim to the test, but then all four of them went missing when they were stolen two years ago. Burglars broke in while I was at a match. I thought I'd never see the pens again, but last month I came across one of them in a second-hand shop. I bought it, and ever since then I've been writing with it every evening in the hope of contacting its brothers. As soon as I started writing I got a sense of that link my grandfather spoke about. Marianne has been telling me I'm mad, and an idiot, and in need of psychiatric help. But she used to say that before as well."

"So there are another two pens still out there?" Charlie said.

"There are, but not for long. Soon they'll all be together again."

Phil poured Charlie a cup of tea before he returned to his writing. There was a small pile of blank paper on the table in front of him, and a huge pile of paper on the ground next to his chair, each sheet covered in Phil's writing.

Charlie sat on a settee opposite the settee where Marianne sat. He put his tea cup on the coffee table in between them. As Phil wrote with his pen, Charlie listened to Marianne talk about fairies and dishwashers and people who go bungee jumping. Charlie nodded at everything she said.

Phil stopped writing at nine o' clock. He said he had a feeling that the other pens were getting closer. He told Charlie he was welcome to come back on the following evening to see if anyone would turn up.

Charlie had to return every evening for the next week before another pen arrived. This one was in the possession of a woman called Lucy. After Phil told her the story of the four pens she said, "If the three of us all wrote at the same time with the three silver pens it might create a powerful link with the fourth one."

Phil thought it was a great idea, so the three of them sat at the table and started writing.

It didn't take long for Phil to realise that it wasn't such a good idea after all. Lucy kept talking as she wrote. She'd write a sentence and then read it out. She'd edit it as well, and she gave a running commentary on the editing process. She hated most of the words she wrote. While Phil and Charlie would be trying to concentrate, she'd say things like, "'Castle'! I wrote the word 'castle'. I can't believe I wrote you." She was always crossing out words like 'castle'. Or 'pipe organ'. She was always writing 'pipe organ' and then crossing it out.

Unfortunately for Phil and Charlie, Lucy really enjoyed writing with them. She came back on the following evening and wrote with them again. They knew they had to put an end to this, and Charlie had a plan. He told Phil he'd come up with an excuse to miss the next writing session, and he'd get a friend of his to come instead. This friend would bring Charlie's pen but he'd pretend to be the rightful owner of the pen, and he'd claim that he had been drawn to the house just like Charlie and Lucy had been. Lucy would think that all four pens had been re-united, and she'd stop coming around to write.

The excuse Charlie came up with was that he had to visit his aunt in hospital. He got a friend of his called Andrew to pretend to be the owner of the fourth pen. Phil always stopped writing at nine o' clock, and Lucy would go home then. Charlie called around to Phil's house at half-nine to see if everything had gone according to plan.

Things had clearly not gone according to plan because Lucy was still there. So was Andrew, and Phil introduced Charlie to a woman called Samantha. Lucy had believed Andrew's story about buying the pen in a second-hand shop and being drawn to Phil's house. She was just about to go home, when Samantha arrived, and she told a very similar story. She had the fourth pen, but Lucy thought that it must be the fifth pen. Phil pretended to be confused. He said he had always believed that there were only four in the set, but this latest development would suggest that there were five. Lucy said, "Why five? Why not six? Or seven? Or eight? Or a million?"

She said they should all start writing again, and that they needed to write continuously for an hour without interruption. Lucy couldn't go ten seconds without interrupting the others.

They were still writing when Charlie arrived. He said he'd love to join them but he'd left his pen at home, so he sat on the settee and listened to Marianne instead. He nodded whenever he felt it was appropriate, but his mind was far away. He was trying to come up with another plan, but Andrew got there first.

Andrew had been writing continuously for twenty minutes before he put the pen down. He stood up and he laughed maniacally. "I knew this was inside me somewhere," he said. "I knew it. It's been hiding for years, and now it's finally out. It's all down on paper."

"Why don't you read what you've written," Lucy said.

Andrew's reading was very theatrical, and this suited the text. A lot of it sounded like lyrics from heavy metal songs. The central character in it was a monster who ate trees and anything in them.

There was complete silence when he finished reading. The silence was broken by Lucy, who said, "I think it's extremely unlikely that there are more than five pens."

Charlie congratulated Andrew on the spectacular way he brought the writing group to an end, but this hadn't been Andrew's intention at all. He really had written about the monster, and he's been writing about it ever since.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been listening to an album of songs about pastry. The wife's uncle gave it to us. All of the songs were written and performed by a friend of his. This singer-songwriter wrote an album about pastry to avoid controversy after all the trouble he had with his last album, which was about an invisible Yeti who stands behind the Pope. But the pastry album has been even more controversial. He's currently in hiding.

Going Maloney

I found an interesting hole in the orchard. I've never found an uninteresting hole in the orchard. They're not much to look at, but they're a great excuse to start doing some detective work. Who or what dug the hole? Why? What was in it? Is someone looking for buried treasure? Unfortunately, there are too many excuses to stop doing detective work. Watching the rugby was one of them.

My cousin Hugh lives next door to a couple called Millie and Arnold. They go through phases where they look for something new and exciting, and they always find what they're looking for. But after a few weeks they get bored with it, and they realise that it isn't all that new or exciting. This is the start of another phase, one in which they do very little, and they seem to be depressed.

They often left their Christmas decorations up until March. Hugh always looked forward to the end of these slow phases because Millie and Arnold provided a lot of entertainment when they looked for something new. One summer, after months of spending his evenings staring at the lawn, Arnold started walking around the garden with a TV aerial in his right hand. He was trying to get a better reception, but the aerial wasn't plugged into a TV. He wanted a better reception in his head.

During the phases of action Hugh would hear the sound of typing coming from his neighbours' house. Millie used to type descriptions of her dreams. She believed that by typing them she'd be burning them onto her memory, and they'd feel real. In one of her dreams she was the host of a chat show on French TV. After typing a description of the scene she felt a need to re-enact it in her living room.

She re-decorated the room so that it looked like a TV set. She invited people around to the house so she could interview them. One evening, Hugh and his fiancee Annabel were in the audience (actually they were the entire audience) when Millie was interviewing a boxer called Billy, who was there with his manager. Billy had won all of his professional fights, but he'd recently been suffering from a condition that made him dance at inappropriate times, such as in the middle of fights. This was known as 'going Maloney'. Millie invited a historian onto the show, and he explained that the first boxer who had 'gone Maloney' was a man called Clud Maloney. Clud gave up boxing and became a dancer because of his condition.

During the interview Billy revealed that he had never gone Maloney when he was extremely angry. His next opponent was a man called Jim. It seemed as if Jim had figured out that it would be in his interests to pacify Billy. He had sent Billy a tin of biscuits, and he'd written a poem that praised Billy's body odour and his love of animals.

At the end of the show Hugh and Annabel met Billy and they said they'd like to help him. "All you need to stop you dancing during the fight," Annabel said, "is to be extremely angry during it. Can you think of anyone who makes you extremely angry?"

Billy didn't have to think for long. "Jeff," he said. "Jeff is always hanging around April. She's my girlfriend. I hate the way she keeps laughing at the stupid things he says. I hate the way he keeps saying stupid things to make her laugh. I really want to punch him in the face, but that's the one thing she wouldn't laugh at."

Annabel smiled. "This is perfect," she said. "Just give us April's phone number and we'll see after the rest."

April agreed to play along with Annabel's plan. Billy didn't know anything about it until he made his way towards the ring for the fight. April was in the front row, and Jeff was sitting next to her. He was telling her something that she found hilariously funny.

Billy was furious. There was no danger of him going Maloney. There was little chance of the fight lasting longer than one round either. Jim tried reciting his poem, but it didn't work. He was on the canvas within two minutes, and there he stayed for another two minutes.

Billy was long gone by the time Jim got back to his feet. As soon as he won the fight he left the ring and headed towards Jeff and April. Jeff saw the flaw in their plan as soon as he noticed the look in Billy's eyes.

Jeff ran from the arena and Billy followed him. April wasn't far behind, and then came Hugh and Annabel, and then just about everyone else in the arena. Even the referee joined them. Jim would have been on his own if his corner team hadn't decided to stay behind.

Billy chased Jeff down streets and alleys, through pubs, restaurants and office buildings. He finally cornered his prey in the corner of a park. The red brick walls were too high for Jeff to climb over. Billy had acquired a pool cue sometime during the chase. He raised it high in the air but before he could bring it down Jeff started crying. "Please don't hit me," he said. "I don't deserve this. I'm always getting hit, and I hardly ever deserve it. For every person who laughs at my jokes there's someone else who wants to hit me. But I have to do it because it's my duty to make people laugh. An angel appeared to me when I was four and told me that. The angel possessed the body of my teddy bear. He's always laughed at my jokes. Last night he told me I was so funny he had to kill Mr. Bunny to stop himself exploding with laughter... That was a joke."

When Jeff stopped speaking the only sound the onlookers heard was the sound of his sobs. Everyone was embarrassed by this. No one could look him in the eye, and Billy certainly couldn't hit him with a pool cue, much to his disappointment. But disappointment was a far cry from extreme anger. Billy started dancing. A band started playing a song. They had joined the chasing pack when they passed through a pub. Many drinkers from the pub had joined the chase as well, and they all had glasses in their hands. Within minutes everyone there was drinking and a party was well underway.

The moose's head over the fireplace is still wearing his green scarf after Ireland beat France in the rugby on Saturday. He's keeping the scarf on for the soccer tonight (Ireland versus Georgia in a World Cup qualifier). Winning that match might lift the gloom of the recession for a while. The wife's uncle says he's working on a plan that's guaranteed to end the recession. He won't reveal it until it's completed, but he's been reading a lot of books about chocolate recently.

Reality

Officially it's Spring now, but you'd never guess that from the weather. We've had days of relentless rain followed by snow. A lot of work needs to be done in the garden when the real Spring shows up, unless I can find an excuse in the meantime. My great-grandfather rarely worked in the garden. He believed that if he left his fingers in the soil for long enough they'd turn into worms.

My cousin Jessica once got a summer job as a maid for a woman called Edwina. Jessica was an art student at the time, and this helped her get the job. Edwina spent a lot of time at art auctions and at galleries. Her house was huge but there was very little free wall space left because of all the paintings she had. She put a lot of thought into her purchases, and into where she should hang them, but she never made her decisions on aesthetic considerations. She said that the paintings on the walls were her attempt to stitch together her version of reality.

Jessica spent a lot of time following Edwina around the house, listening to her boss talk about the paintings, and how they fitted into her reality. Many of Edwina's paintings depicted women gazing out over the sea. Edwina believed that this reflected a need for a vast empty space to dwell in, to escape the cage of our senses. There were other common occurrences that she tried to interpret. In many of the paintings in her study there were small dogs with ribbons on their heads. The paintings in one of the spare bedrooms all depicted people whose clothes suggested they lived in the nineteenth century.

In the afternoons Edwina would go out looking for more paintings with her friend, Sylvia. Sylvia was also trying to construct her version of reality. She believed that poems fell out of everyday objects, so she was fascinated with things like kettles and knives. Her house was full of things she'd bought in second-hand shops or at auctions. Sometimes on foggy nights she'd see lanterns hanging from the trees, and no one else would see them. She couldn't quite integrate this with everything she'd learnt about reality from kettles, so she came to the conclusion that seeing the lanterns was just another spark of madness. These sparks were completely harmless, as long as they didn't start a fire.

Another friend of theirs, Imelda, often dropped by for tea, and she'd discuss what she'd learnt about reality. She believed that robins could be moved by rays of God. She'd spent a lot of time observing them, and she'd become convinced that this was true. This was one of the few firm conclusions she had come to. She used to listen to the news on the radio every day in the hope of getting another glimpse beneath the surface. Her niece was the news reader. Imelda was convinced that there was something significant about this. She stopped paying attention to the meaning of her niece's words and she focussed on the sounds. The sounds always filled her mind with images of shoes.

One day Imelda brought a man called Edgar around to see Edwina's paintings. She had met him in an art gallery, where he told her about his belief that art could provide a glimpse into a deeper level of reality. He painted pictures of the landscape in his soul. His soul was another world, he said, and this world was heavily populated. He believed that himself and the world around him existed in someone else's soul, and this person would be our God. Edgar would be the God to the people who lived in the world in his soul.

He let his unconscious mind control what he painted and these paintings provided an insight into this world, but they changed over time. He started painting himself in street scenes from a rainy Victorian London. It would be late in the afternoon, and the gas lights would be lit. He looked for signs of change in the outer world that corresponded to changes in the inner world. He shared his beliefs with everyone he met. Most people thought he was mad, but some people thought he was on to something. He met a man called Dennis who used to write to look at his inner world. There were many similarities between this world and Edgar's. Both bore a strong resemblance to nineteenth century England. Edgar read some of Dennis's writings. Some lines triggered vivid images in Edgar's mind, as if they were referring to something inside him. He read this line countless times: 'Whispers creep over dusty tables and chairs in Mr. Springhaybermouse's house.' Edgar could see a room full of charts and maps when he read these words.

Edwina showed Edgar the paintings in her spare bedroom, the ones depicting people in nineteenth century clothes. He was convinced that both Edwina and Dennis were able to see into the world that he thought was in his soul. This made him question his beliefs about reality. The inner world couldn't be confined inside him if other people could see it.

Dennis came around to see the paintings as well, and he got a strong feeling that he'd seen it all before. Edwina, Sylvia, Imelda, Edgar and Dennis would meet in Edwina's house at least twice a week and they'd discuss reality. They believed that they had been drawn to each other for a reason. A group was being stitched together, and they'd stitch together their conceptions of reality to arrive at a fundamental truth.

Jessica believed that there was little point in trying to look beyond what she could see, and this belief had always served her well. But after living in Edwina's house for a few weeks she started to wonder if there was something lurking beneath the veil of reality. She often heard noises in the middle of the night, and she became increasingly convinced that the house was haunted.

This wasn't the only strange occurrence. One morning she was walking past a portrait of a woman in a small sailing boat. The woman in the painting looked sick, so Edwina called the doctor. He put his stethoscope to the painting and listened. Then he got out some small brown medicine bottles and a paintbrush. He used the paint in the bottles to make some minor adjustments to the woman's face. She looked much better after the paint had dried.

Edwina was glad that everything was back to normal, but on the following day many more people in the paintings showed symptoms of illness. The doctor was called again, and he spent most of that day working on the paintings.

On the following day the illness had spread even further. Sylvia, Imelda, Edgar and Dennis called around to discuss the problem. They were all very anxious. They were convinced that something unpleasant was going on at a deeper level of reality. Dennis believed they were all doomed, but he didn't say anything at the time.

Jessica started to worry about it as well. Worry turned to terror late one night when she was woken by the sound of the door to her room opening. Before she had a chance to scream she heard a man's voice. He said, "Sorry. Wrong room."

The scream was fully loaded, but she decided not to pull the trigger. The voice sounded very familiar. She opened the door and looked outside. The doctor, whose name was Peter, was looking into another room. He was holding an artist's palette and a paint brush. Jessica realised who was behind the illness. By night he was making the people in the paintings look sick, and then by day he was getting paid to make them better. Jessica smiled at him, and he knew that the game was up. He confessed to everything. He said he had always wanted to be an artist, but he had given in to his parents' demand to be a doctor. Over the past few years he had neglected his medical career and spent most of his time painting, but funds were running low. Edwina was one of his few remaining patients. She liked him because of his love of art. He liked her because of her love of art as well, and because she had given him a spare key to the house, just in case of an emergency. He started sleeping in her basement when he couldn't afford his rent. His need for money was becoming an emergency, so he started altering the paintings by night, and then curing them.

Jessica had some sympathy for him. She promised she wouldn't tell Edwina about what he had done, but only if he eradicated the disease that was affecting the people in the paintings. He agreed to make them all look well again.

Edwina and her friends were relieved when they saw that everyone was restored to health. They held a party to celebrate, and this made Jessica and Peter wonder if they could make other alterations to the paintings, to create other causes for celebration.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys listening to 'The Four Seasons' by Vivaldi. I enjoy it as well, even though classical music isn't really my thing. The wife once talked me into going to a classical concert. The conductor was really a hypnotist, and he hypnotised the audience at the start. He said, "You are going to believe that this is the finest performance of Mozart's Requiem you've ever heard." I didn't get hypnotised because I wasn't paying attention at the start. I was convinced that one of my shoes was slightly bigger than the other, so I was looking down at them. None of the orchestra could play their instruments. The conductor was paying them minimum wage to pretend to play. One of the cellists was holding his instrument the wrong way around. The brass section got bored and they started a fire. The orchestra got a standing ovation at the end. I joined in, and my appreciation was genuine. The concert was much better than I had expected.