The Wasp

The fields are full of rabbits these days. My grandfather used to say that when he was young he often saw gangs of rabbits fight gangs of cats in the fields at night. On other nights he'd see gangs of dogs take on gangs of leprechauns, or gangs of spiders versus gangs of actresses. The actresses were working on silent films in the area.

My uncle Harry enjoys smoking his pipe, almost as much as he enjoys looking at his watch. After years of devoting most of his spare time to smoking his pipe and looking at his watch (often while drinking in the pub) he discovered another hobby that was just as enjoyable: walking up hills and mountains. He found that he could combine this with smoking and looking at his watch (but not with drinking in the pub).

One day he was walking through the woods on a mountainside when he met a woman called Carmel. She was working on a painting. She had brought some other paintings with her, and she was hoping to sell these. As Harry was looking at the paintings they met a man called Adrian who was looking for his wasp, but neither Harry nor Carmel had seen a wasp that matched the description he gave. Carmel drew a sketch of the wasp based on the description. Adrian thought it looked just like Howard, his wasp, and he said it would be a great help in finding his pet.

"I know exactly how you feel," Carmel said. "I lost a leaf last year." She showed them a photo of the leaf. "I'll do everything I can to help you find your wasp."

Harry said, "My grandfather once lost an eye and he spent days looking for it. He eventually found it in his eye socket. It's always the last place you look."

Carmel said she'd go looking for Howard, and Harry joined her. They walked down a winding path through the trees. They met a woman who was selling a strawberry. Harry bought it, and he shared it with Carmel.

The path led them to a cottage in the middle of a clearing. An old woman was sitting on a chair in front of the cottage. Harry asked her if she'd seen the wasp and she said, "I'm afraid not. I've seen thousands of bees because I keep bees in my back garden, but I haven't seen any wasps."

Carmel said, "Is it possible that the wasp is hiding amongst the bees?"

"I'm sure the bees would have noticed," the woman said. "It would have to be a very good disguise to fool them. But wasps are masters of disguise, so I suppose it's worth checking."

She introduced herself as Maggie and she took them to the back garden. She poured two glasses of lemonade for Harry and Carmel, and they sat at a patio table while she did a head count of the bees.

When the count was completed she said there were no uninvited guests in the hives. She sat down at the table with Harry and Carmel, and she started telling them her life story. Harry paid little attention until she mentioned that her late husband used to present a weekly radio show about model trains. Harry often listened to this show, even though he had little interest in model trains. It was something he could do while smoking his pipe and looking at his watch. He told Maggie he loved the part of the show where her husband was joined by a man who'd talk about what to do when model trains melt.

Maggie took them inside to show them her husband's trains. The tracks covered the entire attic in the cottage. They went over rivers and they passed through hills and valleys. There was a model of a town, and the station was at the edge of the town.

Maggie blew the train's whistle as it passed through the town. Both Harry and Carmel noticed a buzzing noise just after the whistle was blown. "That sounded like a wasp," Carmel said.

Maggie blew the whistle again the next time the train passed through the town. They heard the buzzing again, and Harry thought it was coming from the model of the bank. He lifted the bank's roof and he saw the wasp inside. Howard was standing on a tiny trap door. Harry lifted the trap door and he saw a button underneath it. When he pressed the button the whole town was raised a few inches at one side. Maggie and Carmel lifted it up further, and they found bags full of cash hidden underneath the town. They guessed that there must have been tens of thousands of pounds in the bags. "So this is the retirement fund he was talking about," Maggie said.

She gave Harry and Carmel five-hundred pounds each as a reward for helping her find the money. They left the cottage with Howard, and they started looking for Adrian.

As they walked down the path they often came across posters of Howard on the trees. Adrian had made photocopies of Carmel's sketch. The posters mentioned a fifty pound reward for finding Howard.

When they met Adrian, Howard hid behind Carmel's back to surprise him. Harry asked him if he'd found his wasp. He said he hadn't, and that someone had dressed a beetle up as a wasp and tried to claim the reward.

Howard emerged from behind Carmel, and Adrian was delighted. After telling Howard how great it was to see him again and asking the wasp where he'd been, Adrian got out his wallet to give the fifty pounds to Harry and Carmel. They felt guilty because Howard was the one who had located the money under the model of the town. He had made them five-hundred pounds each, so they refused to take the fifty pounds. "Buy something nice for Howard," Carmel said.

The moose's head over the fireplace still has the green scarf, and he's also wearing a green hat to celebrate the victory of the Irish rugby team. One of our neighbours put tiny hats on his goldfish to celebrate. He probably would have done this even if there hadn't been a rugby match.

The Pub on the Moon

Enjoying this beautiful spring weather is a great way of fighting the doom and gloom of the recession. My grandmother often used to tell stories of the constant torrential rain and financial ruin they had to endure when she was young. They used to knit their own hair to save money.

My uncle Ben and his friend Davey have been going to the same pub for years. One summer they thought about getting a change of scenery because the bar man was spending too much time in tears. Davey said he heard about an Irish pub on the moon, and he'd always wanted to go there.

A man known as The Worm was a regular in their local pub. They asked him what he thought about the pub on the moon and he said, "The moon is a satellite that revolves around the earth. You can see it at night. You'll need to look up if you want to see it because it's in the sky. Men have stood on the moon and gazed up at the earth, which would make a more interesting adornment to the sky than the moon. If we all lived on the moon we'd spend a lot more time looking at the sky than we do on earth, unless you spend a lot of time looking at clouds or at stars. Some people are paid to look at clouds. They're called weather forecasters. This job would be much easier on the moon. A farmer's job would be more difficult on the moon. When I was on the moon I went to a pub where a trad band played for four days without a break."

This was enough to convince Ben and Davey that a trip to the moon would be worthwhile. They started building a rocket that very day.

After weeks of working on it they began to wonder if their trip to the moon would be worth all the effort. They'd made blueprints for the rocket, and they'd tied broom handles to buckets but they were still a long way away from creating something that would take them as far as Donegal, let alone as far as the moon.

One day Davey showed Ben a book about the moon. His brother, Noel, had come across this extract:

"The moon is covered in glue and when young people get stuck to it you'll need something to prise them off. When they have been removed you should pat their heads and laugh to lighten the situation. I recommend using a broom handle or a very rigid giraffe to prise them off. When dogs bark at night and daisies look upwards with smiling faces, the moon will be in a hurry to get back into the hole it lives in. It spends the day rolling in its sleep through a vast network of tunnels until it rises from another hole at the start of night. The moon will hope that this night will be better than the last, that this night won't encourage daisies to smile maniacally. The moon would see them if they did. The moon sees everything when it's in the sky. As it dreams during the day it edits all of the scenes it has seen by night. I dug a hole in the ground in the hope of finding the moon while it slept. I found one of its tunnels, but I nearly got crushed by the moon as it rolled through the tunnel. I got out of the way just in time, but I still got stuck to the side of the moon. It emerged from its hole and soared gracefully through the sky. All of the things that had become stuck to it fell off, myself included. I landed in a lake."

Ben and Davey spent many hours discussing this passage. They came to the conclusion that the bar man must live in the moon. He'd emerge from his house and set up the bar when the moon becomes airborne.

They abandoned their rocket because it would be much easier to go down rather than up. They wondered how they'd go about finding the moon's tunnels. They tried listening to the ground, hoping to hear the moon rolling through one of its tunnels, but they heard nothing. They decided to ask Samuel for help. He was known to be very clever, but there were question marks concerning his mental well-being. He used to be a member of a local society that was devoted to the advancement of science. He spent one summer studying butterflies. When his study was completed he had to deliver a lecture to his fellow society members. When he finished writing the speech he realised that he'd have to come back every night for two weeks if he was to use all of it. But if he rushed through it he might fit it all into one night. He went for the latter option. For three hours he spoke so quickly that no one was able to follow what he was saying. Everyone in the audience thought his mind had been affected by spending so long out in the sun.

Ben and Davey found him in the middle of a field. He was drawing something on a map. When they told him about the moon travelling through underground tunnels he told them it was a ridiculous idea. "Go back to building the rocket," he said, and he walked away.

"He's hiding something," Ben said to Davey. "He was a bit too dismissive of this idea."

"I think I know what he's hiding. I saw the map he was holding. He'd drawn a line right through the fields. I think he's mapping the moon's tunnels and he doesn't want us to find them."

Finding Samuel's map was simply a matter of breaking into his house that night. They found the map in his study, and Davey used tracing paper to make a copy of it.

They went to the fields and they followed the route marked on the map. When they came to a hollow in the ground they started digging because they thought this place would be closest to the tunnels.

After three hours of digging they heard a noise. They stopped to listen. "Is that the sound of the moon rolling through a tunnel?" Ben said.

"It couldn't be," Davey said. "The moon is in the sky now."

"Then it must be the sound of people moving through the tunnels."

The sound got louder, as if the people in the tunnels were getting closer. They wondered if they should make some noise to make their presence known, but they realised that the sound was coming from above when something fell on top of them.

The thing that fell on top of them was actually three things: Samuel, Samuel's bike and a bucket containing a liquid that smelled so bad it made them nauseous. Davey recognised the scent. "That smells like Bill," he said.

Samuel told them about how Bill had been spending a lot of time with a woman called Eloise. She had many other admirers. One of them was Hal, who hated seeing the other admirers actively admiring her. He'd go to her house late at night with a gun to make sure none of his rivals were there. Bill was planning on spending many night time hours at her house, so he needed a way of convincing Hal that he was elsewhere. Samuel came up with the idea of leaving a trail of his smell on the route between Bill's house and the river where he went salmon fishing late at night. This was the route marked on the map. Samuel cycled along the route with the bucket full of the Bill-smelling liquid attached to the back of the bike. There was a hole in the bottom of the bucket to leave a trail of the liquid. Hal would come across the trail on the way to Eloise's house, and he'd know that Bill was at the river.

Ben and Davey hated smelling like Bill. They wanted to get home as soon as possible to change their clothes and have a bath. As they were walking past a pub, a light came on in an upstairs window. Seconds later the front door opened and they heard the publican say, "Come in. Come on in for a drink. The first one's on the house."

Bill was a famous drinker. He could keep a pub in business if he was the only customer. The publican got the smell and he thought Bill was outside. He was disappointed to see Ben and Davey step out of the darkness and into the light of the pub, but he didn't turn them away. They promised they'd work as a team to drink as much as Bill would.

The moose's head over the fireplace is still wearing his green scarf. There are plenty of reasons to wear it. He's celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, the success of the Irish at Cheltenham and the rugby team. They're just one win away from actually winning something. The wife's uncle says he bought a ticket to the moon from a woman who said there was a great nightlife up there. He realised he'd been conned when someone told him that the nightlife on the moon was about as exciting as the nightlife in a nursing home.

Ten Cabbages

We've had all sorts of weather over the past week, from spring sunshine to snow. The daffodils have decided to come out anyway. There's more daylight to appreciate the garden, although the garden and the surrounding landscape look beautiful in the light of the moon. My grandfather once saw a scarecrow wedding in one of the fields late at night, beneath a full May moon. Both bride and groom wore black. My grandfather thought the bride must have been pregnant at the time because he saw a baby scarecrow just a few weeks later. Despite the baby's size, he was able to scare crows within a hundred yard radius. Real babies can do that as well.

My cousin Charlotte spent a lot of time thinking about ten cabbages. This scared her. She wondered why she should be so concerned about ten cabbages and be completely unaware of... She didn't know what she was completely unaware of, but she was sure there must have been many things that had evaded her attention while she thought about ten cabbages.

She tried to forget about the cabbages by throwing the net of her attention on other things, but she couldn't catch anything. She went to an art gallery and she tried to concentrate on the paintings, but she kept thinking about the cabbages. These thoughts also filled her mind at the roller-disco.

After days of fighting she finally surrendered to the cabbages. She satisfied her curiosity by visiting Imelda and saying, "Why did you put ten cabbages on the shelf in your dining room?"

"I was waiting for someone to ask that question," Imelda said. She provided the answer after making tea in her kitchen. She said she did it to attract the attention of a ghost called Ignatius who walks down the street every evening. He often looks in people's windows. She thought he'd be interested in the cabbages because many years ago, when he was still alive, someone had tried to kill him by throwing ten cabbages at his head. This attempted murder failed, but the would-be murderer didn't give up. He tried throwing many other things, such as pillows or soft toys, before he finally realised that harder objects might be more effective. He threw ten bullets at Ignatius, and this attempt failed as well, but it gave him the idea of putting the bullets into a gun.

He only needed one bullet to kill Ignatius. The murderer regretted it immediately because after he pulled the trigger he came up with the idea of a gun that fired cabbages. He was sorry he hadn't thought of that before. Imelda was hoping to lure the ghost of Ignatius into the house because he seemed very distinguished. He wore a top hat and he had outstanding facial hair. But when he saw the cabbages he hurried on down the street. Charlotte suggested that the cabbages wouldn't be very inviting to Ignatius because they'd remind him of his death. Imelda said, "I didn't think a ghost would be worried about death, but maybe you're right. He might still be bitter about his passing."

"You might be better off using something else to lure him in."

"Like what?"

"The only thing I know about men who wear top hats is that they love biscuits."

"How many men in top hats have you come across?"

"One. He used to keep piles of biscuits under his top hat."

"I suppose it's worth trying."

They went to the shop and they bought every type of biscuit they could find. They arranged the biscuits on plates that covered the table in Imelda's dining room.

They ate some of the biscuits as they waited for the ghost of Ignatius to show up. He finally appeared shortly after ten o' clock that night. He glanced in the window as he hurried past the house, but he re-appeared a few seconds later. He stared at the biscuits. He became so engrossed in the sight that his head went right through the window and he didn't even notice where it was. When he realised that part of him had entered the house he said, "I'm terribly sorry for intruding like this."

"That's quite alright," Imelda said. "Would you like to bring the rest of yourself in?"

"I'm afraid I don't have much to bring. Nevertheless, I'd be delighted."

He was too much of a gentleman to come in through the window (windows where there to get out of houses in a hurry) so he came in through the front door. He couldn't eat any of the biscuits, but the mere sight of them seemed to satisfy him, and he was delighted to have an opportunity to tell his biscuit-related stories. He told Charlotte and Imelda about the biscuit he was secretly eating during a lecture on the theory that thoughts were tiny insect-like creatures in your brain, and that some thoughts had drills and they'd drill a hole to make a comfortable bed. Sometimes they'd make a bed to sleep in and sometimes they'd make a double bed to mate with another thought. Ignatius believed this theory. A biscuit-related thought in his head had mated with many other thoughts and produced countless off-spring. A thought concerning forks had been just as promiscuous.

His biscuit stories were interesting at first, but after a few hours they started to get tedious. At two o' clock in the morning Imelda desperately wanted to get to bed, but Ignatius hadn't noticed any of the hints she had dropped. She'd yawned repeatedly and loudly. She tried looking at her watch every ten seconds. She even tried banging her head off the table, but he didn't notice. As a last resort she went to the kitchen and she came back with a bag full of cabbages. She threw them at his head. She missed with the first two, but the third one hit the target. It didn't exactly 'hit' the head of Ignatius because it passed right through, but it certainly seemed to have a profound effect on the way. He was too shocked to speak at first. When he finally managed to form a coherent sentence he said it was one of the most pleasurable experiences he'd ever had in his death, or even in his life. He believed that the ghosts of thoughts in his head must have felt the cabbage passing through, and this excited them. He could sense that some of his more promiscuous thoughts were particularly excited. He asked Imelda to throw another cabbage at his head. She loved throwing cabbages at people, so she gladly obliged.

When she'd thrown all ten cabbages she picked them up and threw them again. Charlotte got the impression that this was developing into something private between Imelda and Ignatius, so she went home.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been getting a lot of visitors over the past few days. The Cheltenham festival is on this week and the moose's head is a very good tipster, even though he doesn't like horses. Mabel, one of our neighbours, called around last night when the wife's uncle was there. He turned on the charm for her. He likes widows because they're less likely to have husbands who'll chase him away in the middle of the night, although some of those ghosts can be more terrifying than the husbands who are still alive. And the ghosts are normally much fitter.

A Good Saturday

A robin has built a nest in the coal shed. When I mentioned this to the wife's aunt she thought I was trying to pass on a secret message. After considering it for a few minutes she winked at me to indicate that the message had been received. Ever since then she's been wearing a hat, an overcoat and a fake beard.

My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, were walking down a quiet country road one Saturday when they saw a woman called Elisabeth digging a hole near an oak tree in the middle of a field. The stoopers were also in the field. The stoopers are a club who meet every evening and they look down as they walk around the town. During the summer they go out into the fields as well. It's a great way of seeing beauty in the ground. Jane and Claudia watched the stoopers walking around the field in a tightly bunched pack. They were all looking down, but then a head peeped up from the centre of the pack. Jane and Claudia recognised the head. It belonged to Dermot. He looked at Elisabeth digging the hole, but when he realised that Jane and Claudia were watching him he hid amongst the stoopers again.

Jane and Claudia walked on. They saw a balloon in a tree. They saw a cat looking for a mat. They saw a detective looking for clues with a magnifying glass. He was looking at the ground, and he failed to notice the woman pointing at a poster on a telephone pole. This seemed like an obvious clue, so Jane tapped the detective on the shoulder and pointed at the woman.

For a few seconds he was in shock after having his shoulder tapped, but he soon spotted the clue. He thanked Jane, and he asked her to tap him on the ankle in the future because this was less sensitive than his shoulder. Jane said she would, but she had no intention of ever tapping him on the ankle.

They all looked at the woman, and they followed her finger to the poster. It was just a sheet of white paper with these words written with a red marker: Hundreds of escaped puppets are hiding behind stone walls.

As they tried to decipher the meaning of the poster, Mabel went by. She waved as she passed them. They waved back, and then they returned their attention to the poster. The detective told them that something odd was going on. The fields were normally full of people living the stray days from a year ago that were still hanging around, and all they can do is hang around in fields and look down at the grass or up at the clouds who have somewhere to go, things to do. But the fields were empty.

The woman pointed towards the ruins of a castle. Jane, Claudia and the detective went there, and within the crumbling walls they found all of the people who normally roam the fields. They had seen the poster as well, and they interpreted it as an instruction to go to the castle.

Jane and Claudia said they'd love to stay and do whatever the people in the castle were doing because it looked like fun, but they had to go into town. They walked on again. They went to the park in the town. They listened to a symphony played by an orchestra of people talking to their hands.

At the end of the performance they met Alex. He was a chef, and he invited them around for lunch. Jane and Claudia could never say no to a meal made by Alex, so they all went back to his house.

At the end of the meal he announced his intention to marry Mabel, but he didn't know where she was. Jane and Claudia thought about this. They went through everything that had happened that day until they went slightly past the bit where Mabel went past them. They reversed a bit. "She went past us when we were looking at a poster near the castle," Jane said.

Jane, Claudia and Alex went to the road near the castle and they walked in the direction that Mabel was travelling in. They saw some ducklings who were moving in a different direction. They were tempted to follow the ducklings, but they remained on course.

Alex spent a lot of time talking about Mabel. He said she was a jig-saw piece in his life, and when he'd joined her up with the other pieces the picture would be clearer.

They saw a lovely tree and an ugly dog. They enjoyed looking at the ugly dog. There was a man with a megaphone talking to a woman with an ear trumpet. A man with a stethoscope was listening to a moss-covered rock. I listened to a talking rock once, but that's another story.

"This is a story?" I once heard someone say when I was telling the story of the talking rock. I insisted that it was a story, even though it wasn't much of one. The story is that I sat on the ground and listened to the rock. The rock seemed to think it was telling a story, but really it was just rambling on for an hour.

Jane, Claudia and Alex kept walking, and eventually they came across Mabel. The ducklings were following her. There was an awkward silence at first. Jane and Claudia remembered that Alex wanted to propose, so they turned the other way. He asked her to marry him and she said, "I will, but only if you stop cooking ducks."

He agreed. Jane and Claudia turned around and congratulated them. The ducklings seemed genuinely happy.

Alex said that the picture seemed much clearer now that Mabel had been fitted into place. Jane said to him, "I think you'd be the perfect person to fit together all the jigsaw pieces we found today, like the poster on the pole and Dermot hiding amongst the stoopers and Elisabeth digging a hole."

They went to the field where Elisabeth was digging the hole. She was still digging. Dermot was there with the stoopers, but instead of looking down at the ground they were digging holes in it. All of the people who had been in the castle were digging holes in the field as well.

Elisabeth's husband, Richard, was a spectator. He told Jane, Claudia, Alex and Mabel about what had happened. He said you had to be very careful in your choice of words when you were talking to Elisabeth. If you said 'I've just been to the shop' she wouldn't understand you. But if you said 'The strawberry jam is on the gate post' she'd say 'Did you get the milk?'. If you wanted to tell her you'd been in the shed you'd say 'The gooseberry jam is on fire'. With the wrong tone of voice this could mean 'I've eaten the cake in your watering can'. Tone of voice was important. The words 'strawberry jam' would be in most sentences, but sometimes other types of jam would be mentioned.

Earlier that day Richard had been trying to tell her that his aunt Gladys was coming to visit. Elisabeth hates visits by Aunt Gladys because she stays for hours and never stops talking. Richard had tried to break the news gently. He told her that the strawberry jam had been nominated for a literary prize, but he used the wrong tone of voice and she interpreted it as follows: 'There's treasure buried ten paces south of the oak tree'. This is why she was digging a hole.

He was afraid to tell her the truth, and afraid that if he tried he'd only make things worse. He wanted to keep his aunt away because Elisabeth might figure out what he really meant if she saw Gladys. So he put up a poster that mentioned puppets. Gladys used to work in the kitchen of a hotel. She was afraid of lifting the lids of pots in case puppets jumped out and attacked her face. She'd never lost that fear of puppets. Richard put the poster on the pole so she'd see it when she was walking down the road and she'd go home as quickly as she could.

Dermot had seen Elisabeth digging the hole and he knew she was up to something. He wanted to find out more, so he used the stoopers as cover while he spied on her. He told them he needed help finding his beard after it blew away in the wind. This was true, but the beard had been missing for weeks and he'd already searched the fields for it. After spying on Elisabeth for nearly an hour he was no closer to finding out why she was digging, so he started digging as well, and the stoopers did likewise.

The people who gathered in the castle had waited there for hours, but nothing happened. Not even one puppet appeared. They started to wonder if this was a trick to keep them out of the fields. They returned to the fields and they found Elisabeth, Dermot and the stoopers digging holes. They thought they'd found what they'd been kept away from, and they started digging holes as well.

As Alex looked at all those people digging he had an idea. He gathered them all together and he told them it was pointless digging so many holes in the field. What they needed was one huge hole in the spot where Elisabeth was digging. Elisabeth could be digging for days on her own, and it would be dangerous if everyone dug there at once. Alex told them about his friend, Ivan, who was an inventor. Ivan had invented a machine that could be used to tan people's faces or to blow holes in the ground. If it was turned on to full power, it could create the hole they needed.

They were all sick of digging so they agreed to let the machine do the work and they'd divide whatever treasure they found.

Twenty minutes later Ivan was there with his machine. He put it in the hole that Elisabeth had been digging. He turned it on to full power, pressed the start button and ran away.

It created an enormous hole in the ground and it gave everyone a tan. These tans were soon hidden when the shower of earth descended on them. Dermot's beard fell to the ground as well. He picked it up and put it on his face. You could see his broad smile behind the beard and the layer of earth.

"We all own that beard," Elisabeth said. "We must divide it equally, just like we agreed."

Dermot seemed horrified by the thought. He ran away, and everyone else ran after him. Jane and Claudia chased him as well, even though they didn't want any of the beard. A Saturday would feel incomplete without a good chase.

The moose's head over the fireplace is wearing his green scarf again after Ireland beat England in the rugby. We might be facing economic ruin but at least we have fifteen men who are good at chasing an oval ball around a field. The moose's head is also wearing a fake beard. The wife's aunt put it on him, and she gives him cryptic messages. Last night she said 'The blue wheel keeps turning until the sugar spills on the otter', and then she winked.