'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Don't Look Up


The garden gnomes aren't enjoying the rain anymore. They want to return to dry land. They've had to tie themselves down so they won't injure themselves by hitting off each other when their ship is being battered by the wind. The novelty of being tied down wore off fairly quickly.


My uncle Alan plays the harp and he writes his own songs. In his younger days he took the song-writing much more seriously. There were times when he'd be inspired and the songs would come easily, but sometimes it was a struggle. One summer, when he was in his early twenties, he found himself short of inspiration. The best he could come up with was a song about prejudice against people with glasses.


He needed a change of scenery to get out of his rut so he decided to go on a camping trip in the country. He took a train to a small town out in the back of beyonds. When he stepped off the train and stood on the platform he saw a beautiful unspoilt countryside before him. He decided to walk in this direction.


After walking for hours he thought it might be useful to know where he was. Someone could easily accuse him of being lost if he didn't know where he was. He decided to ask the next person he met on the road.


He had to wait half an hour before he met anyone, and he met more than twenty people then. They were in a marching band, but their march was much slower than his walk. Their pace suited the funereal music they were playing. The musicians were too engrossed in their music to tell him where he was. He walked on ahead of them.


A few minutes later he came across an old woman. A shawl covered her head. He couldn't see her face because she was crouched over as she walked. A walking stick prevented her from falling forward.


"Excuse me," Alan said to her. "It might sound as if I'm lost, but in actual fact I'd really just like to know where I am, purely for the sake of knowing where I am. I was wondering if you could help me out."


She stood up straight and removed the shawl. Long golden hair fell over her shoulders and he saw that she was really a beautiful young woman. She told him her name was Alison, and that she was wearing this disguise to hide from her ex, whose name was Con. He'd been trying to win her back ever since she ended their engagement, which had happened shortly after the beginning of their engagement.


"I saw him in a completely different light after I accepted his proposal," she said to Alan. "I found out that he collected dead birds. He told me that he often mentioned this before we got engaged, but I wouldn't have taken much interest in him then. He comes from a rich family, and he loves reminding people of it. He smokes cigars and he uses people's hats as ashtrays. He refuses to accept that I don't want to marry him, and it's very difficult to hide from him. If only I could find someone who'd pretend to be engaged to me, just to get Con off my back. Ideally this man would be a stranger so I can say that he's an old flame, someone I met on my travels around Europe."


"I travelled around Europe," Alan said.


"And you're a stranger as well, aren't you?"


"I am."


Alan believed he could get a great song out of this, so he agreed to pretend to be engaged to her. She was delighted. She took him home to meet her parents.


She obviously came from a rich family as well. The house was huge. After meeting her parents, he was introduced to brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents. She always introduced him as her new fiance. She had told him she couldn't tell them the truth because no one in her family was good at keeping secrets. Most of the people he met felt a need to point out how angry Con would be.


He was given a room in the house that night, despite insisting that he'd be happy to sleep in his tent on the lawn. Dinner was served by the butler in a huge dining room, and afterwards they had drinks in the drawing room. When Alison's father made a toast to Alan's health, everyone laughed. Alan laughed as well because he was drunk.


On the following morning he finally managed to get directions from one of the servants. He wasn't lost, he said, but he wanted to become better acquainted with the lay of the land. He was pointed in the direction of the nearest village, which was just over a mile away.


He walked to the village. Everyone he met there said hello to him. Some people shook his hand. When he went into the pub all of the drinkers knew who he was, and they all shook hands with him. He couldn't tell if they were offering congratulations or commiserations. The bar man told him that it was custom for newcomers in the village to try their gin. It was free. Alan couldn't refuse a free drink, and it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. The bar man told him about Con. The more Alan heard, the more worried he was. Con had his own helicopter. In truth, there wasn't much chance of the helicopter getting off the ground. Alan didn't know that it had been built by the local blacksmith.


When he was walking home he stopped to look up at a cloud that was shaped like a butterfly. He spent a few minutes looking at it floating by, and when he looked down again he noticed that he was surrounded by swans, and they were converging on him. He had to act quickly, so he ran at them and jumped over the line of swans. He kept running until he got back to the house.


He met Alison in the garden and he told her about the incident with the swans. She said, "It sounds as if you're cursed."


"Cursed?"


"You didn't drink the gin, did you?"


"I did."


"Then you're definitely cursed."


"What do we do?"


"The safest thing to do would be for us to end this fake engagement right now and never to see each other again."


"How will that make things safer?"


"Well, it'll be safer for me because I might get injured while the swans are pecking you to death. Y' know, there were times during our fake engagement when I wished we were engaged for real."


She kissed him, and then she ran away as fast as she could.


The end of their fake engagement didn't stop the engagement party in the house that evening. You had to put the brakes on these parties a few days in advance if you wanted to stop them in time. Alison wasn't there. Alan heard that she was on her way to the south of France.


A chamber orchestra played in the garden and waiters carried glasses of champagne on trays. There were fireworks after the sun went down, but Alan was afraid to look up at them in case the swans returned. Seeing as Alison had already left this party in honour of their engagement, and taking into account the fact that this engagement was no more and that it didn't amount to much in the first place, Alan felt that it wouldn't be a breach of etiquette if he left. He got his rucksack and he managed to sneak away without being noticed.


After he had left the grounds, he walked away on a narrow, winding road, and he decided to take a left turn down a dirt track through the fields. He thought he'd be better off getting lost because it would be more difficult for anyone to find him.


He was wrong about this. After walking for five minutes on the dirt track he heard the sound of an engine behind him. He looked back, and in the light of the moon he saw a van. It was moving slowly because of all the people who were either hanging off the sides of it or crouching on the top. They all had weapons. Many more armed passengers must have been inside it. Alan guessed that Con was driving the van because he could see the red glow of the cigar inside.


He ran down the dirt track, and soon he came across something that looked like a car. There was a key in the ignition. If he'd known that this vehicle had been made by the blacksmith he might have been more cautious about using it to get away from his pursuers.


He thought it was a brilliant means of escape until he tried to stop it when he was going down a hill. The brakes didn't work. He had to use a river to stop the car, not that he had any choice in the matter. If he had a say in it, he'd have used the river to slow the car down rather than stop it, but the car stopped right in the middle of the river. He got out and climbed onto the roof. He saw the van coming down the hill towards him. He heard the sound of music coming from the other side of the river, and he saw the marching band slowly making their way down the hill at the other side. They were still playing the same sad music, and they were walking behind pall-bearers who held an empty coffin. Alan got the impression that the coffin was intended for him.


This impression was reinforced when the swans arrived. As they converged on him, he started singing a song about a depressed farmer. He thought it was the best song he'd ever written, and that it would be appropriate for his final performance.


The swans stopped to listen. The band stopped playing. Con parked the van on the banks of the river and all of its passengers got out or climbed down to listen to Alan's song.


They applauded at the end, so he started singing another one. The band joined in. He ended up singing all of the songs he had written, and by the end of his performance there were hundreds of people there to hear him. A boat was sent out to the car, and Alan received a rapturous ovation as he returned to dry land. Con shook his hand and offered to fly Alan home in his helicopter. Alan didn't realise that this was another attempt on his life, but he declined the offer anyway. He said he wanted to complete his camping holiday.


He didn't ask anyone for directions during the rest of his holiday, and he didn't mind admitting to himself that he was lost. He only attempted to find out where he was when he thought it was time to return home. He felt refreshed after his break, and he was sure the font of inspiration would produce a torrent of crystal clear water. The first song he wrote was about the joys of eating cornflakes.


The moose's head over the fireplace is still wearing his green scarf in protest against the result of Ireland's World Cup play-off against France last week. He was looking forward to seeing Ireland playing in the World Cup. The wife's uncle says that he's organising a World Cup with his friends, and that France won't be invited. He won't say what sport it is, but we've figured out that it involves ducks.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A Walk Down the Avenue


The garden gnomes are starting to enjoy the heavy rain because it gives them an opportunity to sail around the garden in their ship. They even built a life boat for it. This came in useful when the ship hit the rockery and sank.


My cousin Ronan set up a local newspaper with a friend of his called Shane. Their printing press was a photocopier, and the stories they printed were the sort of things the other newspapers would steadfastly ignore. They wrote about UFO sightings, aliens, ghosts and other paranormal activity.


Shane used to collect and repair antique robots. One of his robots escaped and it went into Mrs. Sheehan's house down the road. It made an awful mess in her dining room, over-turning all the furniture, breaking vases and pulling paintings from the walls. Mrs. Sheehan was furious. After Shane made the robot apologise (which took a few hours of tinkering inside its head) he agreed to pay for any damage done and to clean up the mess. Ronan said he'd help.


When Shane was putting a painting of a horse back on the wall he noticed an envelope taped to the back of it. He removed the envelope and opened it. There were photos inside. One of them showed Mrs. Sheehan's father working on a model of a UFO. Another photo showed him proudly standing next to the finished model. Shane recognised it straightaway. This flying saucer had been seen in 1963. A photo had been taken of it, and when Shane was growing up he heard the stories of many people who witnessed it that evening. This incident is what first got him interested in UFOs.


Shane cried when he saw these photos. It was worse than finding out that Santa didn't exist. The realisation that Santa didn't exist had come after ten years of investigation, during which time he had become increasingly sceptical about Saint Nick. The realisation that the UFO was a fake was brutally sudden.


After the sadness passed, anger took over. "We've got to publish these," he said to Ronan.


"They're not exactly ours, are they? Technically we'd be stealing them."


"I don't care. Journalistic integrity allows you to rise above technicalities like that. People must know the truth."


Mrs. Sheehan was furious when she saw the photos in the paper. She threatened Ronan and Shane with legal action. Shane told her she could take whatever action she wanted, if she wanted to attract even more attention to her father's unforgivable hoax.


"Fine," she said. "Forget about the legal action. There are other avenues that I can... No. I won't say what I'll be doing on those avenues. It'll be a surprise. You might find me walking down the avenue or skipping down the avenue or dancing down the avenue with a balloon stuck to my head."


A few days later, Ronan and Shane received an anonymous report of ghostly activity in an abandoned house. The spirit of a young woman was seen at a downstairs window of this house close to midnight every night.


Ronan and Shane went to the house that night. They got in through the back door. The rotting timber didn't offer much resistance. In the kitchen, the only bits of furniture that hadn't been removed were in pieces on the floor. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls in the hall and the carpet was wet.


They went to the room where the ghost had been sighted, and they were surprised to find that it was well furnished and in very good condition. There was a piano in one corner and a round table underneath a chandelier. There was a vase full of flowers in the centre of the table. Their flashlights illuminated paintings on the walls, but they noticed that one painting was on the ground. They guessed that it should have been hanging on the wall to cover the safe.


The safe door was open. When Ronan shone a flashlight inside he saw a red velvet bag. Just as he reached in to get it, a light came on in the room. They looked towards the door, where they saw Mrs. Sheehan taking a photo of them.


"This is what I've been doing on the avenue," Mrs. Sheehan said. "I've been redecorating on the avenue, and writing anonymous letters on the avenue, and taking photos. What's the most likely story you'd come up with to explain this photo? What would the proper newspapers make of it? I'd say it looks like two youths up to no good. They've got a very good scam going. They use a robot to go into someone's house and wreck a room, claiming that it was all an accident. And then when they're cleaning up they have a great chance to spot all the valuables, and find where the safe is. They break in at night to steal from the safe. But they were caught in the act and the owner of the house took a photo of them."


"Blackmail," Shane said. "That's the only story to explain what's going on here."


"It's not blackmail," Mrs. Sheehan said. "I'm only demonstrating how easy it is to fake photos. So now ye can see that the photos of my father faking the UFO were fakes. I want ye to print this in the paper next week."


"Never," Shane said. "People must know the truth."


"If I don't read an admission that the photos are fake in next week's paper, I'm giving these photos to a proper paper. I'll leave ye to decide what ye're going to do on the avenue."


Ronan wanted to print the admission, but Shane wouldn't give in. Truth was more important than anything, he said. That's the only reason he started his newspaper. He didn't care if people thought he was a thief as long as they knew he was honest.


On the following day they went to interview a man called Riley. He wanted to tell them about his voyage on a ship that had a cargo of whiskey.


"The ship hit an ice berg," he said. "It wasn't entirely the ice berg's fault. It's the whiskey I blame. And I suppose myself and the other crewmen would have to take some responsibility for consuming the whiskey. At the start we agreed to drink only a little bit, but we took a little bit more than a little bit, and we were worried about getting in trouble. So we drank a little bit more to ease our worries. But that only made us more worried because even more of it was gone and we'd get into even more trouble. So we drank some more. When the ship hit the ice berg and sank we were relieved because we'd drank most of the whiskey but we wouldn't get blamed for it. The loss of the cargo was the ice berg's fault, we'd say. There was a lot of singing and drinking on the lifeboat as we watched the ship go down. We had taken the last of the whiskey with us. When I saw another crate of it in the water I reached in to get it, but I fell overboard. My colleagues were too inebriated to notice, and they were singing too loudly to hear my cries. I managed to climb onto the ice berg that had sunk the ship. I retrieved as much wreckage as I could. I found some food, and I made a shelter with bits of timber. And of course, I had my crate of whiskey.


"The ice berg became my home. I let it take me wherever it wanted to go. We got on well. It never tried to throw me off, which I thought was a good sign. One day I woke up and I was surprised to find that I had a visitor. A man in a brown suit was standing outside my shack on the ice berg. He told me he had spent the previous six months trapped in the hull of a ship. He was all alone with spiders who kept growing. He could hear the creaks and groans of the spiders as they grew. I said to him, 'Are you sure it wasn't just your imagination?' He said, 'I'm certain. I saw them twice, just brief glimpses of them. The second time I saw them they were enormous.'


"He had escaped from the ship, and after floating for days in the freezing water he was starting to wonder if he'd get out of this escapade alive, but then he came across my ice berg. I was worried that I'd be stuck on the ice berg with him for years, but shortly after he arrived we sighted land. We built a raft and we rowed ashore. We consumed a fair amount of whiskey in a pub that night to celebrate our reunion with dry land, but on the following morning I had lost the celebratory mood. I failed to see the appeal of dry land. I needed the frozen land of the ice berg, so I decided to return. I filled my raft with as many supplies as I could gather and I rowed back to my ice berg.


"I spent many happy years on it, returning to dry land every few months to get some food. As time went by I started to sense that there was something growing in the centre of the ice berg. I could see it in my dreams. When I woke, I never remembered what it was, but I had a sense that it was benevolent, not like the spiders. I developed an ability to communicate telepathically with it. It told me that I could use the berg's ice to control other people's minds. If someone else consumes some of the ice, I can develop a telepathic relationship with that person, and I can control them. I have a whole freezer full of that ice. I go back to the ice berg for my summer holidays every year, and I always bring some ice home with me."


"Could you demonstrate this for us?" Shane said.


"I certainly could. Is there anyone in particular you'd like to control?"


"Yes," Shane said with a smile. "Yes there is."


He told Riley about the trouble they were having with Mrs. Sheehan. Riley gave them two ice cubes and he told them to put the cubes into a glass of whiskey and give it to her. Then he'd be able to control her. He'd make her say uncomplimentary things about her friends and relations. Shane and Ronan would record everything she said, and then she'd be forced to withdraw her threat to distribute the photos she had of them. He told them that the ice cubes cost fifty euros each, but that they didn't have to pay him until after they'd seen that the ice worked.


Shane invited Mrs. Sheehan around to his house to discuss the photos. They had hidden a video camera in his living room to film her talking about her friends and relations. When she arrived, Ronan and Shane explained their latest position. They had had a change of heart, they said. After carefully inspecting the photos of her father with the model of the UFO, they had come to the conclusion that the photos were fakes. They were sorry for any upset they had caused her. They offered an unconditional apology, and this apology would be printed in the paper.


She accepted their apology, and she gladly accepted the offer of a glass of whiskey. Ronan made sure she got the glass with the ice cubes in it. For the next twenty minutes, she spoke about breeding rabbits. This didn't give her any opportunities to say bad things about her friends and family.


When she finished the whiskey, Shane offered her another. She said she'd love another. He apologised for running out of ice cubes. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Ice cubes are just a tiny cherry on top and the whiskey is an enormous chocolate cake with a thick layer of icing."


After five glasses of whiskey she finally started talking about her friends and family. She said that when her sister spoke she sounded like someone talking in the voice of a horse. Most of her friends were ugly, she said.


After another few drinks they had trouble understanding what she was saying, but they had more than enough on tape to make sure she'd drop her threat. While she was laughing at one of her own jokes, Shane whispered to Ronan, "They work. The ice cubes actually work."


"They do not," Ronan said. "It's the whiskey that's making her say these things. There's no way I'm paying for those ice cubes."


"We have to pay. Now that we've got her off our backs, do you want to make another enemy straightaway? At least wait a few weeks."


Ronan knew that infuriating Riley would be too risky, but he still didn't want to part with the cash. So when Mrs. Sheehan presented them with an opportunity to make some money, they took it. She started talking about the robot who had wrecked her room. She loved the way he looked, she said. He was impossible to dislike. Ronan said she could buy him for a hundred euros. Shane told her that the robot would be a bargain at that price because he'd done a lot of work on its brain so he'd stop wrecking rooms and start cleaning them instead.


It was definitely the drink that made her believe what Shane said and pay a hundred euros for the robot. She regretted her purchase on the following day, and she was furious when Shane and Ronan told her that they'd recorded everything she said. She told them she'd be slinking back down the avenue for now, but one day she'd be returning with her robot, who'd roll steadfastly down the centre of the avenue, with a brain programmed for vengeance. Her nephew was an expert on these things, she said.


Her nephew still hasn't made the robot roll down the avenue with vengeance on its brain. He seems to have become side-tracked with a project to make the robot pick its nose, but Mrs. Sheehan still has her hopes for vengeance pinned on the robot.


The moose's head over the fireplace looks very distinguished in the photos taken by the wife's aunt. He's wearing glasses in them, and he's drinking tea from a china cup. The cup was part of a set that my great-grandfather bought. It was designed for tea parties for robots. These parties were always very tense. It was only a matter of time before one of the robots started crying and over-turned the table.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Free Medicine


The lawns are covered in leaves after the strong winds we've had recently. The garden looks very different now. The bare trees leave in much more light. The wife's aunt says you should wear dark glasses in the garden until your eyes become accustomed to the new scenery. She has glasses for many different situations. Her rose-tinted glasses are designed to protect her from the moon's influence. Without them she'd believe she was a badger and she'd start digging a new home.


My aunt Joyce needs a regular dose of natural beauty. It has medicinal benefits, she believes. She'll go for a walk in the woods or she'll climb to the top of a hill where she can see the countryside for miles around. She's determined to use as much of this medicine as she can because it's entirely free. The only other free medicine she came across in the past was the potion created by a friend of hers called Lynn. This potion would help people stay calm and take the appropriate evasive action when they became the focus of an irate bull's ire. Lynn felt she had a duty to give the medicine away for free because it could save people's lives. It took two hours for the potion to take effect, so there wasn't much point in taking it when you found yourself alone in a field with a bull. You'd have to take it if you thought there was a chance you'd encounter a bull later in the day. Some people took it every day. Joyce stopped taking it because of some unpleasant side-effects. One of them was an overwhelming desire to hide in a barrel when the potion wore off. The only unpleasant side-effect of appreciating natural beauty was occasionally getting wet in the rain. And it was very difficult to overdose on natural beauty. People who overdosed on Lynn's potion would be gripped by a fear that gravity was about to stop working. The potion was ideal for people who believed that being gripped by fear was a great way to pass the time. It was also suitable for people who spent a lot of time hiding in barrels, but Joyce chose to stick with the free medicine she found on top of hills or in the woods.


Her favourite spot in the woods was near a small waterfall on a stream. She could spend hours watching the water flowing over the smooth stones and listening to the sound. It was a great way of clearing her head. Nothing remotely like a desire to hide in a barrel could be found in her mind after spending time next to the stream. All you'd find in there would be a need to smile continually and to make small-talk with woodland animals.


One afternoon she went to the stream, hoping to rid her mind of an unwelcome visitor. A visit from one of her husband's friends on the previous night had left her with a desire to get the sweeping brush and hit her husband, Cyril, and his friend, Jeff. She had only just started listening to the water when she heard another sound. She looked around and she saw a man sitting amongst the trees at the other side of the stream. His eyes were closed and he was sitting in the Lotus position. He was making an 'om' sound. She asked him what he was doing there. He opened his eyes and he smiled at her. "I'm meditating," he said. "My name is Peter."


"Nice to meet you. Why are you meditating here?"


"It's so peaceful. People would pay a lot of money for this sort of tranquillity, but here it's completely free."


"I know. That's why I come here. It's certainly peaceful, or at least it is when there's no one here making funny noises. What I do here is a form of meditation as well. I do it silently."


"Don't let me stop you."


He closed his eyes and he made the 'om' sound again. She wanted to say that stopping her was exactly the thing he was doing, but she tried to forget about him and focus on the water.


This proved to be impossible. The sound was too annoying. She said to him, "Do you have to make that noise through your nose? Wouldn't it sound better coming from your mouth?"


"The sound is made by something inside me and it comes out through whatever exit it sees fit."


"It sounds to me as if your words are coming out through a different exit entirely."


"Some very strange sounds have come out of me in the past and I've had no idea why or how they're being made, but it's always felt absolutely right that they should be let out. They're like dogs let out to play after being inside for hours."


He closed his eyes again and he let the sound out. She wanted to say that it sounded like a dog who's just got something dear to him stuck in something, but she didn't think he'd stop making the sound, so she started making a sound of her own. She said 'blip' every few seconds, but this had no effect on Peter. She left the woods and she went to the hill.


After standing on the hilltop for hours she still hadn't rid her mind of a desire to hit Peter with a sweeping brush. She was afraid that he'd become a regular visitor to her favourite spot next to the stream. Her fears were confirmed when she went back there on the following day. She brought ear plugs with her, but these weren't enough to stop the sound from getting in through the door and wrecking the room in her head, like an over-exuberant dog who's just been playing in the mud. Her skill with a sweeping brush might have got the dog out, but she could do nothing about the sound. She was more tempted than ever to use the brush on Peter.


She went to the hilltop again, and this cleared her mind enough for her to be able to see that there were better ways to get rid of him. If she made the spot less peaceful for him he'd find somewhere else to meditate. She'd have to do something more annoying than saying the word 'blip' over and over again, but there were lots of things that were more annoying than that.


She was glad she hadn't used the sweeping brush on Jeff because she thought he might be able to help her. He believed that he had the ability to be a great tenor, if only his fear of flying hadn't stopped him from travelling to the places where great tenors normally perform. He had to settle for performing his own songs to an appreciative audience in the pub. The drinkers were even more appreciative of the singing dog, who sounded as if he was lamenting the loss of something dear to him. Joyce got Jeff to sing next to the stream in the woods while Peter was meditating there. Before Jeff began his song he asked Peter if he'd mind the singing. Peter said he wouldn't mind in the slightest, and Jeff sang his song about the quality of football pitches (he believed that they were far too good).


Joyce was listening nearby. Birds flew from trees when Jeff started singing, but when he finished his song she still could hear the annoying nasal 'om' emanating from Peter. Something more abrasive than Jeff's voice would be needed to get rid of him.


She tried many things over the following week. She got Jeff to come back with his brother and both of them sang the song, even though the brother didn't know the lyrics and he didn't seem to know where he was. He made up the lyrics as he was going along. This failed to make Peter stop repeating his single word. He didn't even open his eyes when Joyce's brother said, "Will I punch that man to see if he's asleep?"


A smoker's cough and the noise of a chainsaw failed to move Peter, so she convinced my cousin June to bring her kids, Daisy and Graham, on a nature walk in the woods. They spent a long time near the waterfall, and the kids never stopped talking during that time. Here's a brief extract from what Peter would have heard:


"What's that fish called?" Daisy said.


"I don't know," June said.


"Is he called Marlon?"


"I don't know."


"Hey, Marlon!" Graham shouted at the fish. The fish failed to respond. "He's not called Marlon."


"What about Roger?"


"Hey, Roger!... He's not called Roger."


Graham spent the next half-hour shouting names at fish, but none of them responded and Peter didn't react. Joyce gave up hope of ever making him leave.


One day she took Mrs. Casey's dog out for a walk in the woods when Mrs. Casey couldn't go out because of a cold. When they were walking by the stream, Peter was there again. Joyce did her best to ignore him, but the dog was fascinated by him. The dog loves sniffing things, and he started sniffing Peter. When Peter opened his eyes the dog looked up at him and wagged his tail. When Peter closed his eyes again the dog went back to his sniffing. Every time Peter opened his eyes the dog looked up and wagged his tail. It only took ten minutes for Peter to crack. He stood up and walked away. Joyce felt like celebrating. After she had kissed the dog she stood in her favourite spot and watched the water flow over the stones. She stood there for hours and she wasn't bothered by the dog, who kept sniffing her feet.


Every time she goes there she brings the dog with her, just in case Peter returns. She always brings something for the dog to sniff. He seems to get as much enjoyment from the sniffing as she gets from natural beauty.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys appreciating the beauty of nature every autumn. If you can appreciate relentless rain then this must be a great time of year. One of my neighbours says he learnt how to swim by standing in the rain. He has an Olympic-size swimming pool in his garden. In the summer he uses it as a lawn tennis court.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Frank's Ambulance


More rain again today. The wife's aunt made an umbrella for the dog. He loved it. You could tell by how quickly he ate it.


My cousin Albert often spent his evenings with his friends, George and Neil. One evening they were bored and they couldn't think of anything to do. They didn't want to go to the pub because the people there were still laughing at them after a quiz. They got a question about Jack and Jill wrong. They assumed it was a trick question when they were asked 'What did Jack and Jill go up?'. It couldn't possibly be as simple as that, they thought. Their answer was 'against a wall'. They hated being laughed at by morons who didn't understand that they only got it wrong because the questions were easy enough for morons to answer correctly, giving morons an advantage because they wouldn't suspect a trick.


To pass the time, they decided to call a doctor. If you call either of the two local doctors they'll both come, but they'll spend most of their time punching each other. People call the doctors when they're bored. When Albert phoned one of them he didn't put much effort into pretending that medical help was needed. He just said that there was something wrong with Neil's head. He wasn't exactly lying when he said this.


When the doctors arrived they knew they were only there for the show, so they started fighting. It was a great way to pass the time, but the fight came to an end when the doctors clashed heads. They both fell to the ground and neither of them got up. They were out cold.


"They need medical attention," Neil said.


"Obviously," Albert said, "but which one of them are we going to call?"


"We could always call Dominic," George said. Dominic was a retired doctor. He was in his nineties.


"He'd charge a fortune if you called him out at this time of night," Albert said.


"Then we'll have to take them to Dominic. We can get Frank to come around with his van."


Albert called Frank, and he was there with his van within minutes. He said, "I'm going to have to charge ye my ambulance fare. That's three times what I charge for transporting beds."


"That's outrageous," Albert said.


"Do ye want to get into a discussion about what would be a fair price to pay? I'm perfectly happy to get into that discussion. Under my current pricing policy, these two doctors are three times more important than old beds and mattresses that smell a bit funny. Maybe it's time I gave that matter more thought. I've been meaning to give it more thought for some time now."


"We'll pay the fare."


They loaded the doctors into the back of the van and they set off towards Dominic's house. They hadn't gone far when Frank stopped at the side of the road. "I need to have a cigarette," he said.


"Why do you have to stop and leave the van just to have a cigarette?" Albert said.


"You want me to smoke in an ambulance with two patients in the back?"


"You want to stop for a cigarette when you've got two patients in the back of your ambulance?"


"If I don't have one now I'll keep thinking about cigarettes until my next one. You want me to drive two patients in an ambulance on bad roads late at night while my mind is elsewhere?"


"Fine. Have the cigarette."


"I don't need your permission to have a cigarette. I'm the one driving this ambulance."


"We're the ones paying for it."


"They're the ones using it." He pointed back at the doctors. "Think about them for once, instead of selfishly thinking about your own needs."


Frank got out of the van and lit a cigarette. When he'd finished it he got back in, put on his seat belt and said, "Right. Off we go so. I needed that. My mind is clear now. I'm completely focussed on my destination. I just need to make one quick stop at my sister's factory to pick up a package."


"Have you forgotten that you've got two patients in this ambulance? Have you forgotten that you're in ambulance mode?"


"They're fine. They're still breathing, aren't they?"


"They are," Neil said.


"Then they're fine. They're as happy as Larry."


"Is that the Larry who keeps setting trees on fire?"


"I've never seen anyone getting so much enjoyment from setting trees on fire. A lot of people would like nothing more than to be unconscious. I gave serious consideration to taking up unconsciousness myself when that cloud of geese were following me around, but I bought a van instead. Everyone should buy a van."


"I thought you threatened to push Gerry's house off a cliff if he bought a van."


"That's because he was going to use it to do the sort of jobs I do."


One of the doctors opened his eyes and said, "Blood! Blood!" He closed his eyes again.


"See?" Frank said. "Happy as Larry."


Frank started the van and he drove towards his sister's factory.


"Is your sister still sticking things to flowerpots?" Neil said.


"The flowerpots are just a small part of her output now. She employs two people. Well, when I say 'people', bear in mind that one of them is Agnes. To me she looks more like a robot whose batteries are nearly dead. She works very slowly, but she can keep going until after midnight. They're still working away in the factory now. Lucy will do her best to make you almost anything you ask for. Like turnips."


George said, "If I wanted a turnip I wouldn't get one that was 'made' in a factory. And I'll never want a turnip."


"These turnips are sculpted into whatever shape you want. Or you could have them just shaped like a turnip. But you'd still have to pay for getting it sculpted. People phone up and order a turnip that's shaped like a greyhound or like misery. Depicting misery is entirely subjective. For Lucy's interpretation, she'll count the words she's written on her arms since the last time she washed her arms. She'll carve a turnip into this number. She'll use three turnips if it's a three-digit number. She's expanding the business into a directory inquiries service. You can phone her and ask her for a phone number. She'll deliver it to you in whatever form you want it. You can have it in turnips if you want, or you can have it smeared in jam on a blackboard. She comes up with new products almost every day. Like musical chairs. Or ear plugs for cats so they won't hear when you're shaving shapes into their fur. It's ideal if you want to shave a phone number into their fur."


When he got to his sister's factory (which was really just a shed behind her house) he said, "I'll be back in a minute."


Twenty minutes later he returned with a cardboard box. "I have to deliver this package to Cyclops," he said.


"Who's Cyclops?" Neil said.


"Cyclops. Hughie. Y' know, he lives near the graveyard. They call him Cyclops because he can sing through one of his eyes."


"It'll take ages to get to the graveyard," Albert said.


"Not the way I drive. There's a good chance we'll all end up in the graveyard. And we have to go up a hill as well, which might be even more frightening. I understand ye have a thing about going up a hill."


They said nothing. They often heard the sound of screeching brakes during their journey, but it was Frank who was making these sounds, not the brakes. He wasn't driving as fast as he said he would, or seemed to believe he was.


Cyclops had ordered a phone shaped like a bird with a human ear. Every time the phone rang, tiny plastic spiders would come out of the ear. Frank showed it to them as they drove towards the graveyard. "You listen at the ear," he said, "and speak into the beak."


George said, "Wouldn't it make more sense to listen at the beak and talk into the ear?"


"When someone orders a phone shaped like a bird with a human ear that produces spiders when the phone rings, I don't think sense is really an issue."


Cyclops was delighted with the phone. He invited them in for a drink.


"I'd love one," Frank said.


"You're supposed to be driving an ambulance," Albert said.


"All the more reason to have a drink," Cyclops said. "I've heard it's a very stressful job."


"It'll be the death of me," Frank said as he followed Cyclops into the house. Albert, George and Neil had to follow him in.


Frank only had one drink, but they were there for over an hour because Cyclops kept talking about the years he spent working with a man who believed he could bring horses back to life. Years of failing to bring horses back to life didn't convince him otherwise.


When Cyclops offered to show them photos of some of the horses, even Frank thought it was time to leave. There were no more stops or detours on the way to Dominic's house. When they got there, Dominic came out to have a look at the doctors in the van. "Well they're still alive anyway," he said. "That's a good sign. Bring them into my surgery and I'll have a closer look."


"There's the small issue of the bill first," Frank said. "I always get paid before unloading the van."


"How much?" Albert said, fearing the worst.


"We'll say... I'll give ye a discount and we'll say a hundred and twenty euros."


Albert, Neil and George paid him, and then he helped them lift the patients inside.


The surgery looked very old-fashioned. A layer of dust covered almost everything in the room. The doctors were placed on the dust on top of two old leather couches.


Frank said, "Do ye want me to wait? My waiting fare is only half of my ambulance fare."


"I don't think that'll be necessary," Albert said.


"What if they need to go to the hospital?"


George said, "We'll call an ambulance that isn't going to take all night to get them there."


"It won't take that ambulance all night to get to the hospital, but it'll take all night to get here. Whereas I'm here now. Beat that for efficiency."


"You have that advantage over a trained ambulance driver, but he'd probably beat you when it comes to not drinking on the job and not delivering phones for his sister."


"Don't forget the smoking. Ye were very high and mighty about the smoking. Speaking of which, I need to go for a smoke now. And then a drink, and then I think I'll deliver a phone shaped like misery. Frogs will come out of the ear."


He left the surgery. Dominic was looking at the medicine bottles on his shelf. Most of them were covered in dust. "I think I'll try this oil my brother brought back from China," he said. "He told me he saw it used on a woman who'd been unconscious for days and it left her screaming for weeks."


The two doctors sat up on the couches when they heard this.


"I had a feeling that would work," Dominic said.


"What's going on?" Albert said.


One of the doctors said, "Frank paid us to pretend to knock ourselves out. He knew ye'd use his ambulance. Business has been slow for him lately. Most people don't want to use an ambulance that smells like mattresses fit for the dump. They'd rather cycle instead. And business hasn't been great for us lately either. We've grown tired of punching each other. A few hours rest was too appealing to resist."


Albert, George and Neil didn't need to look for ways to pass the time over the following few weeks. They were completely focussed on their mission to get revenge on Frank. They tried to engineer a situation in which he'd put an old bed into the back of his van, and then thousands of spiders would emerge from the bed. Their plan was successful. It was worth all the time they spent collecting spiders.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed dressing up as JR Ewing on Halloween. The wife's niece called around in her witch costume. She thinks that trick or treating is for babies. She believes in trick and treating. Every day is Halloween for her.