The Sailor's Return

You can see the changing of the seasons in the way the trees are turning brown. The wife's aunt says she can see it in the subtle changes of behaviour she observes in birds and animals. She says that the snails are building shelves in their houses. She can hear them drilling the walls.

My cousin Jane and her friend, Claudia, decided to take a walk to the river one Saturday morning. They were walking down a quiet road when they met a man called Stephen, who said he had just escaped from Betty's pub. A man who was known as The Sailor had returned from one of his voyages on the previous evening. He claimed to have travelled the oceans, but he was once seen in a caravan in Bantry when he was supposed to be in Mauritius. Betty was in love with The Sailor. She always welcomed him with open arms when he returned to her pub. Drinks would be poured and the singing and dancing would begin. The people in the pub would throw themselves into the festivities with wild abandon, but the atmosphere always changed at about three o' clock in the morning. The subconscious part of people's minds would take over from the conscious part. The people in the pub would start acting out roles from one of Duck Muddelern's plays. Before the opening night of one of his plays he'd go around to everyone in the area and he'd hypnotise them to make sure they went to the play. He'd hypnotise the audience again just before the first act to make sure their minds would be fully receptive to his creation. Every detail of the play would be stored in people's heads, hidden away in some dark room until the plays come out to play when the security guard falls asleep. This always happened at the parties in Betty's pub when The Sailor returned. Sometimes it happened during one of Janice Pelandergaff's plays. Hours of tedium would put the security guard to sleep. A sudden eruption of one of Duck's plays would be an unexpected source of drama.

The metamorphosis of a party into one of Duck's works wouldn't be a problem if the play was the one about the man who loved potatoes or the one based on the life of a woman who set up a business exporting pyjamas. But the 'actors' could be in for a very uncomfortable evening if they performed the play about the woman who thought she was a candle flame and lived in constant fear of being blown out, or the one about the trial of a group of people accused of setting up a radio station to disseminate propaganda that supported their claims that people who wore yellow socks were being secretly kidnapped and imprisoned. The party would become a play when one person would enter a role. The others would follow soon after. Sometimes more than one person would perform the same role. They'd recite their lines in unison. During one of these parties, the role of a priest was played by one man, and his house-keeper was played by ten people, a mixture of men and women.

Stephen told Jane and Claudia that the play in Betty's pub was Duck's most recent work, which was about a burglar who broke into a house in the middle of the night and woke up the guests at a party, people who had only just fallen asleep on chairs or floors or on top of a piano. The burglar did his best to steal from as many of them as he could, but someone called the police and they arrived before he had made a withdrawal from all of the guests. This resulted in a hostage situation.

A man called Phil slipped into the role of the burglar at Betty's party because he had a gun with him. The other guests all took on roles as well, even though they knew that a lot of them would be shot in the play, and there was a real danger that they'd get shot in reality as well because Phil's gun was loaded.

Stephen said that the hostage drama in Betty's pub had been going on all night and Phil was getting nervous because he was waiting for the police to arrive. Stephen had escaped. He was afraid that Phil would start shooting people if the fence between reality and fiction in his mind couldn't be repaired.

Jane thought it would be better not to call the police because this would only advance the action, sending the chain of events closer to the bloodbath at the end. She thought they should go to see Duck. He might be able to manoeuvre events towards a better ending.

When they had told Duck about the play in Betty's pub he said, "I was afraid this would happen when I was writing the play."

"So why did you write it and stage it?" Claudia said.

"Because... I think my aunt Florence called to my house right in the middle of when I was being afraid, and then I forgot about being afraid after she'd gone because my head was full of flower shows and all the other rubbish she was telling me about."

"Is there anything we could do to avoid the ending you wrote?"

"Being reminded of aunt Florence has given me an idea. The central character in the play I staged last summer was based on Florence. This 'aunt Gladys' would arrive on your doorstep and stay for hours. She rambles on for ages, practically shouting, so you've no chance of getting a word in. Not that you'd want to get a word in. Unless it's 'stop'."

"How does that play end?"

"I was thinking of ending it with a shooting, but I went for something less dramatic. After rambling on for hours, Gladys remembers her husband's refusal to acknowledge the existence of flamingos. She cries. After a short silence she goes home."

"That sounds much better than the bloodbath," Jane said.

"You wouldn't be saying that if you had to spend a few hours with aunt Florence."

"So how do we merge the two plays to bring about the non-bloodbath ending?"

"We send in some characters from the play about aunt Gladys. In the first act she arrives at a party with her daughter, Michelle, and Michelle's husband, Jonathon. We don't have time for auditions, so the three of ye will have to play those parts."

Jane was chosen to play Gladys because she could shout the loudest. Claudia would play Michelle and Stephen would play Jonathon. Jane said to Duck, "How am I going to remember all my lines?"

"Did you see the play?" Duck said.

"I did."

"Then you have it all in your subconscious."

They went to the pub and Jane knocked on the door. She loudly announced the arrival of Gladys, just so Phil wouldn't think the police had arrived. She went inside with Michelle and Jonathon. The 'actors' looked weary, and at first they seemed confused by the arrival of these characters from another play, but when they saw a chance to escape the burglar play they gladly took it. Enduring the company of Gladys was better than being shot.

Duck was outside the door. He listened to the progress of the play inside, and he noticed that Phil had yet to fill a role. Duck remembered that he had written a character called Mathew, a ten-year-old boy with a water pistol. He fires it at someone in the play. Duck was afraid that Phil would take on this role, and that he'd use his gun as the water pistol. Duck needed to take that role first, and to push Phil into another role. He ran home and he got the water pistol that had been used in the play. When he got back to the pub he went inside and he said to Phil, "Daddy, Daddy, the cat just said something rude about Mummy's cooking."

Phil looked confused at first, but then he slipped into the role of Mathew's father. He said, "I hope you haven't been bothering the peacocks, Mathew." He put his gun away.

The play ended an hour later. The actors who had been there all night fell asleep as soon as Gladys had left to go home with Michelle and Jonathon. Before Duck left, he took the gun from Phil, just to make sure there wasn't an unplanned staging of his play about the man who woke up and found he had a loaded gun.

The moose's head over the fireplace had no trouble seeing through the disguise worn by the wife's uncle. He was dressed as Karl Marx. His gentleman's club encourages the use of disguises to avoid former girlfriends. They meet in an abandoned rural train station. They wear disguises on their way to and from this meeting place. He insists that it's not all about exploring the many different ways of getting drunk. After the election of their last president they celebrated with a magnum of jam.

The Twenty-Legged Man

The dog is happy with the autumnal weather. Things are back to normal and he can come out from under his blanket. My grandfather often said that when he was young it used to rain strawberries at this time of year, which would be anything but normal. A red blanket would cover the fields. They used to have strawberry fights and build strawberry men. My grandfather avoided the strawberries after he had a dream in which he saw a man made entirely out of eyes. He never trusted strawberry men or snowmen after this. He always got the feeling that they were looking at him.

My uncle Cyril went to the pub one evening. A discussion on the merits of sand paper was interrupted by an excursion to find a love-sick greyhound. All of the people in the pub went out looking for him because he'd won them all money in the past. Cyril and his friends walked through many fields that evening. After they found the dog they went back to the pub and returned to their drinks and their discussion.

Cyril was tired as he walked home down a quiet road that night. He came across a wooden bench at the side of the road. He had walked this road thousands of times but he'd never seen the bench there before. He sat down on it to have a rest. A few minutes later a bus came down the road. Cyril had never seen any busses on this road before, so it was a shock to see one at this time of night. It stopped at the bench and the door opened. Only then did Cyril notice the 'Bus Stop' sign next to the bench. The sign had been hand-painted on a piece of timber.

The driver said to Cyril, "Do you want a drive home?"

"That's exactly the thing I want," Cyril said, and he climbed on board the bus. He gave the driver directions, and he paid his fare. Cyril sat down and they set off, but they didn't stay on the road for long. The driver said he knew a shortcut. He turned through an open gate and he drove through a field.

He stopped at another bus stop in the next field. A man called Dermot got on and he said to the driver, "I'm looking for a man with twenty legs. Or else it's ten men together. Or twenty one-legged men."

"The river near the mill would be the best place to look for anything unusual," the driver said. "Not that there's anything unusual about ten men together. As long as they're not too close."

"They were close enough to act as one, assuming it wasn't a man with twenty legs."

"That is a bit unusual."

Dermot sat down and they set off again. The driver told Cyril that they'd have to take a detour on his journey home. As they drove towards the river, Dermot told them that the twenty-legged man or the ten men together were serenading Eileen when he first saw them. He was furious because she was the love of his life, and he had a doctor's note to prove it. This next time he saw the man/men he tried to catch him/them but he didn't have enough legs to keep up with him/them.

There was nothing unusual at the river. The driver suggested going to the old quarry, so they went there, but there was no sign of the man/men they were looking for. Their next destination was the castle. On the way there, Dermot said to the driver, "How many words would you use in a sentence?"

"It depends on who I'm talking to," the driver said.

"How many words would you use on someone you don't like?"

"One. No, two."

"How many would you use on someone who's just spilled tea on your sleeping bag, assuming it was an accidental spill?"

"Again, it would depend entirely on the person. It would be a lot easier to answer that question if the spill was deliberate."

"She said it was an accident and I took her word for it."

"That's the one word you can never be sure of. You're better off listening to the birds."

"I do that as well, but you can't spend the whole time listening to the birds. You have to listen to people as well."

"You can do both. When I was listening to the birds last week I heard a man and a woman talking about a rat. This was no ordinary rat. I've overheard countless conversations about ordinary rats. Where I grew up, you couldn't walk ten yards without hearing a conversation about an ordinary rat. It's awe-inspiring, when I look back on these things. But this rat I heard about last week isn't like any other rat I heard about before. He can read and write. He's discovered the technology of trousers. He's so sophisticated that he uses lamp shades. Can you imagine that? Not just lamps, but lamp shades. He's made a home in a cave on the side of the steep hill overlooking Molloy's house."

This hill wasn't far from where Cyril lived. He wanted to go home, and he was afraid that they'd be driving around the countryside for the rest of the night if they kept looking for the twenty-legged man, so he suggested abandoning their search and going to see the rat instead. Dermot and the driver agreed. The driver turned around and headed for the hill.

He parked the bus at the bottom of the hill. They got out and they climbed towards the cave. Cyril's plan was to say hello to the rat and then head for home, but they never got to the cave. Dermot saw the twenty-legged man walking down the hill. The bus driver told Cyril and Dermot to split up so they could round up the twenty-legged man or herd of men.

It was a herd of ten men who stayed very close together at all times, which made it easy to round them up. It was like rounding up sheep. They were herded onto the bus. They said they were a choir and they'd been hired to sing to Eileen, but they wouldn't say who hired them.

"We'll need to put them somewhere so we can interrogate them," Dermot said. "I suppose there's no chance the rat will let us put them in his cave."

"I wouldn't think so," the driver said. "But I know a better place for them, a place that will frighten the daylights out of them until there's nothing but the blackest night in their souls. Unless they tell us who hired them before we get there. This is a place that even the stupidest of rats would avoid, a place you wouldn't wish your worst enemies to even think about."

The driver started the bus and drove towards this place. He kept describing it on the journey. It only took two minutes for the choir to crack. They all cracked at the same time. "It's Ralph," they said in unison. "He hired us to serenade Eileen."

The driver turned the bus around and drove towards Ralph's house. When they got there he took a box out from under his seat. He took three guns out of the box. "These aren't real," he said. "The real ones are hidden in another part of the bus, a place you'd never think of looking in. But the fake ones should be fine for this job. Ralph would wet himself before being shot with a water pistol."

He gave a gun to Cyril and one to Dermot and he took the third one himself. They left the bus. The driver locked the door to keep the choir inside.

The bus driver, Cyril and Dermot went to the front door. Dermot rang the doorbell, but no light came on inside. They were just about to go around the back when they heard the bus's engine starting. The choir were making their getaway, but they didn't get far. They crashed into a ditch just twenty yards into their escape.

Most of them were injured, and some of them wouldn't be able to sing that night. They had taken the bus to get to their next appointment. Ralph was taking Eileen out to dinner and he wanted the choir to serenade her when they got back to her place after midnight.

Dermot was glad that they wouldn't be able to make this appointment, but Cyril thought they should do their best to sing there. He told them about his friend Dennis, who has a van full of mannequins. These mannequins had served many different purposes in the past, such as making up the numbers on a football team or frightening teenage vandals. A trolley full of mannequin legs had been pushed through the supermarket car park, where the teenagers had gathered. The vandals, or vandalists as they liked to call themselves, never caused any more trouble after this.

After the driver extricated the bus from the ditch he drove them all to Dennis's house. Cyril asked Dennis if they could hire some of the mannequins to replace the singers who weren't able to sing that night. Dennis was happy to do business at any time of the day or night. He had some old clothes and wigs in his shed, and they dressed the mannequins in these.

Half of the choir who stood outside Eileen's house were mannequins and the other half had bandages and bruises on their heads. Only the latter half could sing, but they couldn't perform with their usual vigour. Eileen was horrified by the sight. She slapped Ralph across the face for organising such a thing for her. She went inside and locked the door.

Dermot was delighted. One more name had been removed from the list of Eileen's potential suitors. All he had to do was to remove all other names apart from his own. He had a feeling that he'd be using the mannequins again.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves this time of year. He can spend hours listening to the sound of leaves falling from the trees outside the window. The wife's uncle says he knocked leaves, apples, footballs and an alarm clock from a tree when he crashed into it. The airbag didn't go off in his hot air balloon. He'd been trying to impress a woman by taking her for a romantic balloon ride over the fields, but the crash killed the romance.

The Vampire

The dog is confused by the fine summer-like weather we've had recently. It's made him suspicious. I think he's afraid that another trip to the vet is due. That's why he's hiding under a blanket.

My cousin Charlotte often went for walks on a mountainside. She used to wonder what was on top of the mountain. One day she decided to find out, and she wasn't just going to ask all the vampires she knows. She was going to climb the mountain herself. After asking all the vampires she knows.

She went to see Felix first. She asked him if he had any advice about climbing the mountain.

"I do," he said. "Take a dagger with you."

"What's on the mountain that needs to be stabbed?"

"If I told you that, you wouldn't climb the mountain. And this thing is really nothing to be scared of. As long as you stab it."

"Okay," Charlotte said. She decided to put off her trip up the mountain. She might go around it instead, and guess what's on top.

They spoke about other things before she went home. Felix had been thinking about buying a greyhound, and Amanda was trying to convince him to give up vampirism.

"I didn't know it was the sort of thing you could give up," Charlotte said.

"The sort of vampirism I have is the sort you can give up."

"What sort is that?"

"Pretend vampirism."

"But I always thought you were real."

"I suppose that's down to how good a pretend vampire I am."

"What about Willie?"

"He's just a pretend vampire as well."

"Susan?"

"Pretend."

"Johnson?"

"No, he's real. So is Cathy. The rest are all pretend."

"I never knew."

"Don't tell Willie I told you. He'd go mad. An irate Willie is worse than any vampire."

"So you could easily give up being a vampire?"

"I wouldn't say 'easily'. It's a great hobby. But I'm starting to think it would be worth giving up just to keep Amanda happy."

"Why not try taking up another hobby?"

"Like what?"

"Tennis. Not the sort of tennis you see on TV. The sort of tennis they play on the gravel court near the pond."

The people who played on the gravel court used frying pans instead of tennis rackets because the pans made better weapons. For them, violence was an integral part of the sport. It was what made tennis enjoyable to play. They never watched it on TV because the professionals weren't even allowed set a tractor tyre on fire if they got angry. On the gravel court you'd find the remains of many such fires. These fires would have been started by players who felt cheated and ended up burning their clothes and anything else they could lay their hands on. At the other side of the pond there was a court made out of sand. Players used tennis buckets to play on this.

Felix had a go at the tennis, and he really enjoyed it, but it didn't help him give up being a vampire. He was using his vampirism to intimidate his opponents. Charlotte thought he should take up a hobby in which an exhibition of vampirism would be a faux pas. She suggested spending time with a woman called Caroline, who used to paint watercolours of wild flowers and countryside scenes. She was happy to teach anyone who wanted to learn the basics of watercolour painting. Caroline would look unfavourably on any action that had a hint of vampirism. She looked unfavourably on almost all actions. Her sister, Belinda, was always doing things she knew would annoy Caroline, things like selling strawberry-flavoured sausages, or associating with a man who believed that the ghost of a vicious dog was haunting his nose. Caroline believed that there were thousands of wrong ways to do everything, but only one right way. Her sister seemed determined to try as many of the wrong ways as possible, while steadfastly avoiding the right way. The right way to deal with strawberry sausages was to purge your mind of the concept shortly after your mind first discovered it. Belinda had already tried hundreds of wrong ways with Jake, the man with the ghost dog up his nose. She had danced with him in fields and collected mushrooms with him in the woods, things that were far away from the right thing, which was to carry a long stick at all times and to prod him if he got too close.

Caroline told Felix all about Belinda when they were painting watercolours in the fields. She said he'd made the right decision to take up watercolour painting. There were so many more wrong hobbies he could have chosen. He could have gone to her friend Emily, whose hobby was putting buttons on cushions. She had started putting waistcoats on cushions as well, and then she put buttons on the waistcoats. She'd talk to the cushions.

Caroline told Felix about her husband, Ned. He was always doing the wrong thing. He once started writing a biography of a jazz band called 'Giddy Mayday Monday'. He spent months trying to track down the lead singer of the band. Ned often disappeared for long periods of time to go on stupid missions like this. He walked fifty miles to see a lemon shaped like a banana. He went to the coast to photograph a seagull who coughs up snow when he gets sick. Ned had to wait a long time for the seagull to get sick.

All of these things were the wrong thing to do, but he did them a long way away from her, which was the right way to do them. She appreciated the peace when he was gone. She never liked the things he brought back, like a wig in a jam jar or a stuffed kitten.

Painting in the fields on sunny days was far removed from vampirism. Felix had to completely abandon his old hobby, and he enjoyed the new one. He loved spending time with Caroline, and she liked spending time with him as well. Ned was away at the time. He was visiting his cousin to discuss his cousin's plans for a hospital on the moon.

Charlotte was delighted to see Felix abandon the vampirism in favour of painting wild flowers and cows, but she became worried when he started spending almost all of his free time with Caroline. He was avoiding Amanda, and he admitted to Charlotte that he was close to falling in love with Caroline.

Charlotte had to do something before that fall arrived. The best way to separate them would be to bring back Ned. Charlotte found him at his cousin's house. He was deeply immersed in the blueprints for the hospital, and he didn't seem that bothered when he was told that Felix was spending so much time with his wife. Charlotte needed some other way of enticing him home. She said, "Someone told me that Mrs. Blumergiggle put a new floor in her kitchen. And it's made out of coffee."

This was something he had to see, so he took a break from the plans for the hospital and he went home.

Charlotte went to see Felix. She told him that Ned was home, and that he was furious because he had heard that his wife was spending too much time with another man. Felix thought he'd need to defend himself, so he wore his fangs and his black cloak to the next watercolour lesson with Caroline.

Caroline was horrified when she saw him. She couldn't possibly be seen out in the countryside with a man who looked like this, even if it was just the cows who saw them together. She told him that she had taught him all she could teach him, and that it was time for him to start experimenting on his own.

This was the end of Felix's relationship with Caroline, but Belinda was hoping it would be the start of another relationship. She loved his vampirism. She asked if he'd be in a play she was staging with Jake. Charlotte was trying to find a way to ensure that Felix would end up with Amanda, so she convinced Amanda to be in the play as well. The play proved to be a great way for Felix to abandon his vampirism, and he became much closer to Amanda. He played the part of a gardener, and Amanda played a vampire.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the company of the mice at night. They climb onto his head and they tell him all the news from around the house. It wouldn't be a pleasant experience if you didn't enjoy the company of something that climbed onto your head. When I went downstairs one night they were telling him the latest theories on the cosmos from the mice who work in the attic.

Ants

Every time the rain stops, the garden gnomes have picnics on the lawns with their pet spiders. They're trying to convince themselves that there's still a bit of summer left. It takes ages to put all of the boots on the spiders' legs before going onto the wet grass.

My cousin Gary was tired of people asking him if he'd been eating worms again. He always said he hadn't, but no one believed him. This annoyed him after he really had given up eating worms. He tried to develop a taste for fine foods to show people that he had moved beyond eating worms. He went to wine-tasting classes as well, and he stuck with the classes even after he realised that he wouldn't be getting drunk at them. The teacher was a woman called Louise. She was passionate about wine. Sometimes she sounded like a football commentator describing a goal. This enthusiasm was infectious. Gary started to see wine as more than just a way to eradicate his reputation for eating worms. The whole class developed an appreciation for wine and they felt grateful to Louise for this gift, so they decided to buy her a gift in return. When it came to deciding what they should buy her, Gary didn't contribute to the discussion. It wasn't his area of expertise. Most of the presents he'd bought in the past either made annoying noises or bore humorous inscriptions that could only be appreciated by someone with the sense of humour of an adolescent. Gary and his friends showed no signs of losing their adolescent sense of humour.

They decided to give her a painting of a boat on a lake. They presented it to her at the end of the final class. She was delighted with the present, and she invited all of them back to her house to see her wine cellar. When they got to her house they hung their coats on hooks in the hall and then she took them down a corridor that led to the cellar stairs at the back of the house. Before they went down the stairs they heard footsteps. Louise's husband and her son emerged from the cellar. They looked as if their nerves had been shattered by warfare. Louise knew exactly what this meant. "Not the ants!" she said.

"They're back," her husband said. "They're laughing at us. I can hear them laughing at us."

Her son started laughing, but he looked as if he was on the verge of tears.

Gary and the rest of the class had a look in the cellar, but they didn't stay long. When they saw a black line of ants heading towards them they climbed back up the stairs as quickly as they could. They went to the kitchen, where Louise made them coffee.

"Are you having trouble with ants?" Gary said to her.

"It started out as trouble, and then it escalated into war. Just when you think they're defeated and the border is secure, they invade again."

"I know someone who might be able to help. His name is Frank. He's a friend of my father. He has a knack for evicting creatures from houses, anything from insects to drunk uncles to polar bears. The polar bear was stuffed and they couldn't get it out through the door. He made the bear go on a diet to get it out. He's used threats of diets to get rid of drunk uncles, but his methods are often more mysterious. He used an army of toy soldiers to get rid of mice."

"I'd be willing to try anything at this stage," Louise said.

Gary phoned Frank later that evening and he explained the problem Louise was having with the ants. "I think I should be able to get rid of them," Frank said.

"Is there a chance that you'll end up breaking some wine bottles in the process?"

"I can if you want me to."

"No. I'm fairly sure she wouldn't want that."

"It will involve drugging crows. Will she have a problem with that?"

"I doubt it, if it gets rid of the ants."

Gary called to Frank's house on the following evening. Frank had two buckets full of crows. "Are those crows dead?" Gary said to him.

"No. They're sleeping." Frank winked. He put the buckets into Gary's car and they drove to Louise's house.

Frank put the buckets into the cellar, and he said they'd have to wait for a few hours. They drank coffee in the kitchen while they waited. Frank told them about the biking holidays he went on when he was young. He cycled all around the country. He kept finding paper planes, and he went in whatever direction the plane was pointing. They often led him into adventures. On one journey he was accompanied by a man who was trying to find the mother of his bike. The planes led him to a bowler hat, and he settled for that instead of the bike's mother.

When they went back down into the cellar the crows were perched on wine bottles. The ants were gone. Louise was amazed. "How did they get rid of the ants?" she said.

"You'll have to ask the crows that," Frank said. "They've never given me an answer, even to the simplest of questions, like 'What is your name?' or 'How long have you been a crow?'."

"I have a good feeling about this," Louise said. "I think we've seen the last of the ants."

"There's no doubt about it."

"Can you get rid of the crows as well?"

"There's a quick way and a way that will take a few hours. In the quick way, some bottles might get broken."

"Then use the other way."

"Right. It will involve drugging ants. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Will getting rid of those ants be a problem?"

"No problem at all. I'll just drug some more crows. Different crows. Drugging the same crow twice isn't as easy as it looks."

"But... Isn't there a way that doesn't involve breaking bottles or drugging things?"

While Frank was thinking about this, Gary said, "Crows love their food. Why not just leave some bread outside the cellar. I've often seen crows fighting over a piece of stale bread."

Louise thought this was a great idea. She left some bread at the top of the stairs and all of the crows came out of the cellar, but they started fighting with each other over the bread. Louise got a sweeping brush and she pushed the ball of brawling crows out the back door. When they were all outside and she had closed the door she said, "I think it's only right that we celebrate."

She went down into the cellar and she came back with a bottle of Chardonnay. She poured three glasses, one for herself, one for Gary and one for Frank. While they were drinking the wine she said to Frank, "There is one other thing you might be able to help me get rid of. I have a drunk uncle in the attic. I left a few crates of cheap wine up there to keep him as far away from the cellar as possible."

"Is there a drunk aunt he could go to?"

"No. Just a sober one."

"Would you have any objections to getting her drunk? Or even drugging her?"

"I wouldn't have any objections at all, but she might. You'd have a better chance of drugging a crow you'd already drugged once before. You wouldn't have to do much to make her hit you over the head with a rolling pin, which is partly why the uncle is in the attic. He doesn't have to do anything to make her hit him over the head with a rolling pin. And he loves not doing anything."

"Which explains why he's doing it in your attic."

"Exactly."

"Aunts are by far the most effective way of getting rid of uncles. I have an aunt we can use."

Frank brought the aunt around on the following day. She kept nodding and smiling, and the drunk uncle found this disconcerting. He started shaking his head and he ran out of the house.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys bird-watching. The birds like watching him as well. If they didn't look in through the window at him he wouldn't be able to see them at all. The wife's uncle says he tried bird-watching once, but he gave up because he got the feeling that the birds were watching him. Everywhere he went he could sense their gaze directed at him. This made him fearful when he was outside. He took up cow-watching to forget about the birds. When the cows stared at him it wasn't disconcerting at all. He found it relaxing.

Olivia's Cookery Course

There's a definite hint of autumn in the air. We've started lighting the fire again, and the wife's aunt has knitted a jumper for the dog. There were cats on the last jumper she knitted for him, so it was no surprise when he tore it off. This one has synchronised swimmers, and he seems to like it.

My cousin Isobel signed up for a cookery course given by a woman called Olivia, who used to teach the classes in her own kitchen. The classes began at eight o' clock in the evening, and sometimes they went on for nearly three hours because Olivia liked to digress and ramble on about things that had nothing to do with cookery. Sometimes she mumbled in a quiet voice and it was impossible to hear what she was saying. At other times she spoke clearly in a loud voice and her words would be reverberating around the walls of your head for days. Isobel enjoyed the classes because of Olivia's style of teaching. Lessons on how to cut a shepherd's pie lasted much longer than lessons on how to make a shepherd's pie, and they were more entertaining.

One evening, Olivia suggested a field trip. They left the house and they walked to the end of the street. They climbed a fence and went into a field. Olivia spoke about cauliflower as they walked through the field. She said that when cauliflower had been defused and rendered safe it could be approached from the side. She had heard of a priest's house-keeper who had tried to cook cauliflower before it had been defused. She got such a fright that she started planning her funeral later that day. She didn't trust her family to organise the funeral. She used to say that she'd sooner donate her body to the prison than let her family decide how she should be buried.

Olivia took her students to the ruins of a red brick building. "This used to be a bakery," she said. "I worked here many years ago. It was easy for me to get a job here because my aunt Gladys was the boss, but I'd like to think that I had enough talent to get the job even if the priest's house-keeper had been the boss. Uncle Peter was supposed to be running the business with her, but he spent most of his time trying to get bees into a beer glass. He wasn't trying to drown the bees -- it was an empty glass. I don't think he was trying to drink them either. I remember seeing a magician who had bees in a honey jar and he turned them into honey, but that was probably just a trick.

"Gladys wanted all of her employees to learn French. She thought it would add to our sense of sophistication. She wanted us to believe that we were better than other bakeries, and much better than the sandwich factory at the other side of town. She used to tell us that they cut sandwiches with hatchets and they communicated with each other using only the word 'ug', and at Christmas they conducted pagan ceremonies in which they'd play drums to entice an immortal pig out of the fog.

"Christmas was the most important time of the year at the bakery. Gladys would get out her famous Christmas cake recipe. It was in French so no one from outside the bakery could read it. She didn't believe that thieves would be sophisticated enough to learn French. She kept the recipe in a safe, and the safe was hidden under the carpet in her office, and the office was full of heavy mahogany furniture. There was a huge table, a sideboard and a chest of drawers. All of the drawers were full of heavy objects, like brass weights and Waterford Crystal feathers. All of these things had to be removed from the drawers and the furniture had to be taken out of the office so the carpet could be taken up and she could get at the safe. The recipe was spread over seven pages. She was the only one who was allowed to see all seven pages. It was my job to weigh the cherries. I didn't know much about the recipe, but I could tell you the amount of cherries in a typical cake. The workers who iced the cakes wore sunglasses because the glare was so bright.

"People were always asking me about the recipe. The cake was very popular. Some people wanted to buy it all year round, but Gladys would only sell it during the three weeks before Christmas. Some people would buy as many cakes as they could afford during those three weeks. There was a man called Luke who'd have an attic full of the cakes by Christmas Day. He'd do his best to ration them, and they'd normally keep him going until October.

"One February he visited his brother in England. He was supposed to be gone for a week, but after three weeks he still hadn't returned. Naturally, people were concerned about his well-being. They considered the possibility that he'd had an accident, possibly as a result of seeing a frog. He believed that frogs were manifestations of Satan, and the fear of what a frog might do to him meant that he showed little regard for his personal safety in his attempts to get away from frogs. He once jumped into a river after seeing a frog on top of a teapot.

"Shortly after first considering the possibility that he was dead, his neighbours' thoughts turned to liberating the cakes. No one wanted to break into his house and steal the cakes, but they were all afraid that someone else would do it. They couldn't bear the thought of someone else taking all of those cakes in Luke's attic.

"Paul and Susanne were friends of mine and neighbours of Luke, and they decided they had to act first. Paul had been taught how to break into houses by his father, but he didn't know where to find a barrel full of dynamite. Breaking in like this may well have broken the house and damaged the cakes anyway, so they needed some other means of getting in. The only other idea they could come up with was breaking a window, and they were so desperate to get the cake they were willing to give it a go. They went to his house after midnight. There were three panes of glass in the back door. Paul was going to break one of them and then reach in to open the door from the inside, but Susanne noticed that the door was already open. Getting into the house was much easier than they thought it would be.

"The door to the attic was in a spare bedroom. They went upstairs to this room. Paul got a chair and put it underneath the attic door, and Suzanne shone a flashlight on the door. Paul stood on the chair and he was just reaching up to pull the door down when they heard a cough. They realised that the back door was open because Luke must have returned. A wardrobe seemed like the ideal hiding place, but when they tried to get in they were pushed back by the people already hiding in it. Paul couldn't help swearing, and the people in the wardrobe recognised his voice. So did all the others who were hiding in the room. Someone turned on the light and the cake-lovers emerged from their hiding places. Fifteen of them had got there before Paul and Susanne. They were all eating cake. The newcomers didn't waste time arguing about missing out on their fair share of the cake. They just tried to make up as much lost ground as possible.

"The cake was gone by dawn, and all of the thieves had fallen asleep. You can imagine Luke's horror when he returned to find his house devoid of the thing he loved and full of the people who had eaten it. It didn't take him long to wake the thieves. One quick-thinking thief came up with the story that they had eaten the cake to celebrate Luke's life because they had been told that he was dead, flattened by a steam roller after being surrounded by frogs. Luke believed this excuse because it had a ring of truth to it. He told them what had really happened. He hadn't been killed at all, he said. He was bird-watching with his brother one afternoon. They saw a strange bird that looked a bit like a pheasant but almost certainly wasn't a pheasant, unless it was a very strange pheasant. It was walking quickly through a field, as if it was late for an appointment. Luke and his brother followed the bird, and it led them to a narrow lane, where they were captured by pirates. These pirates had given up life on the high seas because it was too dangerous. They took their captives to their 'ship'. The ship was really just a van with ornamental sails. They demanded a ransom for Luke and his brother, but they couldn't find anyone willing to pay anything for the hostages. This was demoralising for Luke and his brother. It was even more demoralising for the pirates who had to listen to the hostages talk all day about birds, cake and their aunt's habit of suing waiters. After a few weeks, the pirates paid a farmer to take the hostages off their hands. Luke and his brother escaped from the farm, and Luke made his way home.

"His disappointment at the loss of his cake didn't last long. He told the others that it was time they liberated the recipe from the safe in the office. He had often considered doing this before, but there was no way he could have done it on his own. If they joined forces they could remove all the furniture at night and then he'd be able to open the safe. He'd been taught how to do this by a master thief. When they first met, the thief was telling an ostrich about the joys of bachelorhood. His embarrassment at being caught doing such a thing made him offer his secrets to Luke in exchange for a promise of silence on his chat with the ostrich.

"The cake thieves went home to get some rest. They met again at Luke's house at midnight, and from there they made their way to the bakery. As they were standing outside the office window, arguing about who should break the glass, the window opened and Gladys looked out. On the previous night she had seen some of the cake thieves before they broke into Luke's house. They were dressed in black and they looked as if they were afraid of being caught doing what they were going to do. She was afraid that they were going to break into the bakery to steal the recipe, so she spent the night in her office. She had planned to return home on the following night, but she knew that she wouldn't get any sleep because she'd be afraid of a break-in, and her fears were confirmed when she saw the crowd outside the window. They told her what had happened, and she had pity on them. She offered to make another batch of the cake just for them, but they'd have to pay three times the normal price. They were delighted with this deal. She could have sold it at ten times the normal price."

Isobel said, "If she was making so much money from the cake, how come the bakery is in its current state?"

"Some of the ingredients in the cake were banned, and business was never as good after that. The bakery closed down when Gladys retired. She gave the recipe to me. I keep it in a safe at home, even though it's not as sought-after these days."

"Is there any chance you could show us how to make the cake?"

"I'm afraid that would be out of the question. Leaving aside the question of legality, I wouldn't want anyone else to know the recipe."

"Fair enough."

"But I could make some of the cake for my students. I can see some educational value in it. The last time I checked, education wasn't illegal."

At the end of their final class, Olivia gave them some of the cake. Isobel could see why it attracted so many devotees. Everyone in the class signed up for Olivia's next course.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the fires beneath him. They make the room seem more welcoming, even when the wife's uncle is telling his story about finding a set of false teeth in the mud. He spent weeks trying to find the woman who dropped the teeth there. It was just like Cinderella.