Easter Eggs

We have an extra hour of daylight to watch the trees blowing in the strong winds. Other people look for more exciting ways to use the longer evenings and the strong winds. Hang-gliding has grown in popularity recently, but I'll stick with tree-watching, looking at the hang-gliders stuck in the branches for hours until the wind blows them out.

My cousin Ronan and his friend, Shane, used to hunt for Easter eggs during the week before Easter Sunday every year. These eggs were made by a man called Rodney, who was famous for his chocolate. No one would have expected Rodney to make chocolate of such high quality. He lived on the side of a mountain. He was afraid of towns, or even villages. Even two houses in close proximity would instil a sense of dread. The locals thought he was a bit strange, and he found it difficult to get anyone to taste his chocolate when he first started making it, but once people had overcome their suspicion they couldn't get enough of it. It was expensive, but his customers were willing to pay any price. Some of them were addicted to it. Every Easter he'd hide eggs in the countryside around his house. His customers would spend all of their free time searching for the eggs. Ronan and Shane joined the hunt because you could sell the eggs for a lot of money.

There was something strange about Rodney's brother, Maurice, and not just because he kept telling the story of the time he was electrocuted by his porridge. Ronan always got the feeling that he was up to something. He once told Ronan about how to get pork chops out of peacocks. If he was spending his time getting pork chops out of peacocks then you'd expect to see more evidence of this on his clothes. He rarely changed his clothes. There were many stains on his trousers, but nothing that would come out of a peacock.

People tried to get information about the eggs from Maurice, but he never let anything slip, no matter how many times they said 'Where are the eggs?'. Ronan and Shane decided to try a different tactic. Ronan said to Maurice, "Say something you've never said before."

"There's nothing I haven't said before," Maurice said. "That line I've just said, I've said many times. That line I've just said, I've said many, many times. That line I've just said, I've said many, many many times."

"There must be something."

"If I'm being completely honest, then yes, there is one thing. But I'm not going to say it. That line I've just said, I've said..."

"Is it about the eggs?"

"No, it's about the hot air balloon I fly around in at night to look at..."

Maurice stopped talking when he realised he had said too much.

"You have a hot air balloon?" Shane said.

"Yes."

"And what do you look at?"

"Nothing."

"You might as well tell us the rest."

"Okay, but if ye tell anyone else, I'll treat ye like peacocks. I made the balloon myself because I wanted to look into people's back gardens and farmyards at night, but for the past few weeks I've been observing Billy's white horse. The horse runs through the woods, weaving in and out of the trees, or following paths I never knew existed. I've met this horse before. Myself and Rodney stole eggs from Billy's farm when we were teenagers. We thought we had gotten away with it, but the horse saw us, and he was able to identify us later."

Maurice took them for a ride in the balloon that night. They saw the white horse trotting towards the woods, and Maurice followed him. The horse seemed to glow in the moonlight.

Ronan said, "Are you sure that horse really identified ye?"

"Billy suspected that we had stolen the eggs, so he brought the horse around to our place. The horse nodded when Billy asked if we were the thieves."

"Maybe Billy just trained him to nod. The horse might not have understood the question."

"That would imply that Billy is more intelligent than the horse. If you met the horse you'd realise how unlikely that is. Or even if you just saw Billy trying to operate a chainsaw. You'd say, 'A reasonably clever horse wouldn't do that.'"

Ronan and Shane agreed that the creature below them looked like an exceptional horse. They were entranced by the sight of the white glow moving through the trees with such grace. The horse left the woods and made his way across a field. He moved slowly enough for the balloon to follow. They saw Rodney walking down a lane below. He had a sack on his back, and presumably it was full of eggs, but Ronan and Shane were more interested in the horse then.

The horse stopped outside a boarded-up cottage at the end of a narrow, overgrown lane. Maurice landed in a field nearby, and they went to the cottage. They could see light through the spaces between the boards over one of the windows.

"Will we break the door down and take them by surprise?" Maurice whispered.

"Are you mad?" Ronan said. "Anyone in a place like this in the middle of the night would be the sort of person who'd have a loaded gun, and you want to surprise them?"

"I have a good feeling about this. I sense that the horse regrets informing on us. He doesn't like his owner. Don't ask me how I know that, but I know. I think a reward is waiting at the other side of the door. This is the horse's way of saying sorry about the eggs."

The horse nodded.

Ronan said, "Maybe Billy trained him to nod every time he hears the word 'eggs'."

Maurice paid no heed to what Ronan said. He kicked the door down and went inside. Ronan and Shane peeped into the cottage. They saw Billy. He was with a woman they didn't recognise, but they weren't concerned about who she was because they knew that she wasn't Billy's wife, and he was so 'with' her that almost all innocent explanations would be ruled out. Billy launched into an innocent explanation, a story that required its listeners to believe that he was on an assignment for National Geographic. When he realised that the story wasn't working he gave up and got out his cheque book. Not telling people about what Billy was up to proved to be much more lucrative than selling Easter eggs.

The moose's head over the fireplace has an Easter egg hidden on his antlers, according to the wife's aunt. It's an invisible egg. She's hidden invisible eggs all over the house. She carries a tennis racket with her everywhere she goes in case she gets attacked by the invisible hen who laid the eggs. She keeps swinging at thin air. If you stand near her you're liable to get hit by the tennis racket. It's an invisible racket, but it still hurts.

Grumble

It's heartening to see the daffodils in the garden again. They keep the dog entertained. He had been getting bored with my company, and he hasn't been talking to the garden gnomes ever since they expelled him from their book club. He would have been expelled from most book clubs for what he did.

My aunt Joyce often visits a friend of hers called Judy. They'll walk through the fields in silence or have a cup of tea and a chat in Judy's kitchen. Words are very scarce in their chats. Judy doesn't like too many words. She doesn't want much from life. She'd like a window every now and then, the occasional cup of tea, a scone, a knife and some butter. Jam would be the icing on the cake. But idiots keep talking to her. Most tea in tea shops is ruined by idiots who start talking through their noses. Strange creatures who do things to their eye brows will talk to her and expect her to understand why they do things to their eye brows. Somehow she'll find herself stuck in a conversation with an alien who can't stop laughing after saying 'Lemon and MacCartney' instead of whatever it was they meant to say. People only just returning from being away with the birds sit down at her table and release words that make twittering noises, words that have no intention of perching on a telephone wire and arranging themselves into anything resembling an order. People who dwell in gothic mansions might have heard her inner voice complain when they were tuning in to the astral plane to hear the latest instalment of a soap opera set in Sweden, the fractured action barely interrupted by her grumblings about the idiots and the aliens, the featherheads who should have stayed away with the birds, a voice that trails away in defeat as she gives up trying to fight the inescapable fact that other people will try to talk to her.

Sorry about that. The bit about the Swedish soap opera is pure speculation. I've heard stories about these things, comprehensive reports from people who aren't very reliable, but all that doesn't matter. Judy gets on well with my aunt because Joyce rarely tries to talk to her. Only one person could engage her in a meaningful conversation, and she had no idea how he managed to do it with such regularity. A man called Colman had been living near her for about a year. She'd meet him on the road and get entangled in a conversation with him, and she'd say things she didn't mean to say and end up doing things with him that she didn't want to do.

When she was walking into town to the shop one evening she met him and he said, "It's cold today."

"It is," she said.

"I suppose it'll be cold tomorrow as well."

"You never know. One day last week was gay and the one after it was anything but. And the day after that was called Amy."

"You never know with days."

"Or weeks."

"Or walls. I've never known what to say to walls. I often talk about my coconut."

"Do you still have your coconut?"

"I do. I've taught it how to sit and how to play dead."

"Can it roll over?"

"Only if you push it."

Judy was in tears when she arrived at my aunt's house on the following evening. Joyce was only able to make out bits of her story through the tears. She heard something about talking to a wall and then the words 'He said he used to be a racing driver', and then something about monkey jockeys.

When the flow of tears slowed down, it became easier to understand Judy. She said, "I agreed to go with him to the edge of the world. We were going to have a picnic there. After a dreadful journey in vehicles that looked as if they'd been buried in mud on farms we ended up in a cafe where fire alarms were constantly going off but there was never a fire. The people there just loved the sound of fire alarms. I hated it. Colman seemed remarkably calm when he said, 'Maybe this is the end of the world, and not the edge of the world. I think we might have taken a wrong turning when we were chased by those people dressed up as vultures. Do you remember? They were in the red tank.' He asked me if I remembered, as if it was the sort of thing that might have slipped my mind. After we left the cafe he said he could put everything right with a phone call to a friend of his, but things were much worse after he called his friend. We ended up in a room full of people smoking cigars and we were the only ones there who didn't have cigars, and all of the cigar-smokers kept staring at us, but I think they'd have been staring at us even if we had cigars. They didn't pay any attention to the music. I can't begin to describe how awful the music was."

"This always happens when you talk to him. And you don't need to let it happen. You can have a conversation with him and then leave without being chased by a tank."

"It's the way he talks, and the things he says. I think he's doing it deliberately."

"Then it's about time I had a word with him."

Joyce went to see Colman that evening and she asked him why he kept leading Judy into trouble.

"I can't help it," he said. "I have no control over what comes out of my mouth. Set up a certain conversation for me and my words will portray me as a character with some expertise in whatever we're talking about at that time. Put me in a certain situation and I'll fill whatever role is called for. People have suggested that I'm retrieving past lives, but some of these characters would have existed after I was born. Think of any situation and I'll fill it."

"Any situation?"

"Anything at all."

"In the pub on Friday night, anyone can get up on the stage and sing a song. Or more. Ten songs, if they want to. Normally the audience reaction means they stop at one. Or less than one."

"Well now that really is perfectly suited to me because I used to be a folk singer."

"Really?"

"I travelled the whole world. I've played in huge concert halls and I've provided live elevator music. I'm looking forward to playing in the pub. It's been a while since I last performed."

Joyce went to see him in the pub on Friday night. At first she had believed him when he said he was a folk singer. He had a way with words that could fog your critical faculties. Joyce could understand how Judy was so often entranced by his words. But after their conversation she wondered if the story about being a folk singer was just a lie.

Her doubts were soon allayed. He played the guitar and sang beautiful self-penned songs. If he had stopped at one song the audience would have been furious.

When the ovation after the seventh song had died down he said, "I'd like to sing a song about the Tuffle Hing, an animal I came across on the vast plains beneath the mountains where I used to live. I went by the name 'Grumble' when I lived there because that's what people used to call me, often while pointing at me and laughing. One day when I was trying to spot a Tuffle Hing at the foot of a mountain I found a ruby in a stream. I didn't have much use for rubies, but I kept it anyway.

"Three weeks later, a band called The Throwaway Skipimadoo turned up at my house one morning. They said they'd been travelling towards my house for three weeks, ever since I had found the ruby. It was their job to protect whoever owned it, because the ruby brought trouble to its owner. Part of me was saying that they just want to steal the ruby, but another part was saying they're genuine. I always trust the inner voices that see the positive side in people, and I'm glad I welcomed the band into my home. They were telling the truth about the ruby. In return for their protection, I offered to manage the band. I believed I could pass on my experience of the music industry. Unfortunately, I couldn't pass on any talent. They had heard the music of a pony called Poetry and they thought, 'If he can do it, so can we.' They were wrong about that, but managing them was a very enjoyable experience, and that's what mattered most.

"Life was almost blissful then. I spent many happy hours with the band, just enjoying their company rather than listening to their music. I'd go fishing sometimes, or I'd go to Wilma's house and help make another batch of that orange juice she liked.

"In the evenings I'd go to the vast concrete land at the edge of a nearby town. I'd listen to the desolate sound of the breeze on the empty concrete as the sun set. I love concrete. Some people like the park in autumn, with the leaves falling all around them, but I prefer concrete on autumn days, with a cold wind and my shadow on the ground. I like the sound of footsteps on concrete, and the brass bands when they play their sad music. This is how I ended up organising regattas on the concrete. It was often a windswept desolate affair, and the competitors would pass the time remembering past regattas when they had water and boats, but everyone enjoyed the experience.

"Things were going so well. I should have known it couldn't last. The band knew. One day the mountain police came to arrest me. They said I was fixing the boat races, but all I was doing was helping Wilma with her orange juice, which did have an affect on the outcome of the races, but I didn't know what she was putting into it. I mean, I knew, but I didn't know, if you know what I mean.

"I managed to get away from the mountain police, but I've been on the run ever since. The band are touring Europe to lead the police astray. They made a dummy of me out of cardboard and wire, and so far this has been enough to convince the police that I'm on tour with the band. So far. I feel as if my luck is just about to change. The reason I'm saying all this now is because they've finally caught up with me. I can see the mountain police at the back of the pub. I was afraid that they were near, and that my songs would draw them to me. I thought it was worth the risk just to air my songs again. And even now, as my unfortunate fate looms like a grey concrete wall before me, I'm glad I performed here tonight."

Two men arrived on the stage. They were wearing dark-green velvet uniforms and red hats shaped like onions. They led Colman away. They took him outside and they put him into their portable jail. This jail was a dead tree that was covered in moss. The trunk was hollowed out, and a grill made out of branches served as the window and the door. The tree was on the back of a cart pulled by four horses. Colman would be going on tour for the next year. He'd spend all of this time in the jail, travelling from town to town, where people could point and laugh at him, and call him Grumble.

Joyce went to see him in the jail on the following day. The mountain police had convinced some people to point, laugh and call him Grumble. They'd be setting out on their tour early on the following morning. Joyce was furious with the way they were treating Colman, and she was determined to free him. She convinced Judy to help her. Judy couldn't deny that she liked Colman, despite all the trouble he'd caused her. She secretly liked the trouble as well. Joyce also enlisted her husband, Cyril. Normally he'd glare at her for even contemplating the possibility that he might be interested enough to help, but his role in this plan involved cutting a prison open with a chainsaw, so he was keen to take part.

Before he'd get to work with the chainsaw, Joyce and Judy would scare the two mountain policemen away with stories of a beast who killed sheep at night, a creature who had started attacking humans as well.

Joyce and Judy arrived at the jail as the sun was setting. They stood near the guards.

"I'd love to be in a jail like that on a night like this," Joyce said.

"You'd get great protection from the beast," Judy said. "You'd desperately want to be in jail if you saw those sheep, and the looks frozen on their faces, and the way..."

"I used to be a shepherd," Grumble said. "I worked for a baker who was also the speaker in an informal parliament. I had three things back then. I thought I had everything. I didn't know there were more than three things. When I discovered there were four I thought, 'Interesting. So there are four things.' And I carried on as normal, only with four things instead of three, still thinking I had everything. The baker got rid of the sheep because of some political scandal he wanted to avoid. He bought geese instead. I had to look after them. They obeyed Latin commands. They were very obedient geese, as long as you could speak Latin. But somehow when I was with the geese, four things didn't seem enough. I thought, 'What if there are five things? Maybe I'd be happy if I had five things.' But it didn't seem very likely that there were five things. So I left my job looking after the geese..."

The expressions on the faces of the guards suggested that they were contemplating a long, tedious night ahead. Joyce said to them, "Would ye like to come back to my place for a drink?"

They couldn't resist the appeal of a drink and the company of Joyce and Judy, plus the chance to get away from Colman, so they left.

The beast arrived at the jail and roared. When Cyril saw that the guards had already gone he emerged from his beast costume and he brought his chainsaw out with him. Colman said, "This isn't the first time this has happened to me. The last time..."

The rest of his words were drowned out by the sound of the chainsaw.

Colman was freed within seconds. The guards only noticed he was gone on the following morning when they woke up with hangovers and photos of themselves dancing with inflatable pigeons. Joyce told them that the photos would be sent to their superiors unless they agreed to allow a bale of hay take the place of Colman in the jail for the next year. The guards agreed to this demand because the punishment for their lapse was a year spent washing butlers.

The moose's head over the fireplace seems to understand Russian. I've been playing Russian audio books for him. The wife's aunt listens to them as well, even though she doesn't understand the language, but the sound reminds her of the Russian imaginary friend she had when she was young. His name was Peter. He showed her how to use magnets to influence the outcomes of elections.

Eddie for a Day

I get the impression that spring is seriously considering entering full swing any day now. The daffodils will emerge to see what's going on. The grass will grow. The man who lives in a hut near the river will flick the mental switch that stops him from running around the fields for days, shouting about how the queen is trying to kill him because he ruined her birthday.

My cousin Gary once spent a morning in a supermarket because his friend Gavin was handing out free samples of wine there. The wine was in tiny plastic cups, and Gavin was only supposed to give one to each customer. Gary only had one cup, but he lost count of the amount of times it was re-filled. He did try to count, but he kept forgetting the number so he'd go back to one again. The final figure he had was two.

After leaving the supermarket he met a woman with a clipboard outside. From what he could gather, she was conducting a survey. He agreed to take part, or he agreed to something. He found himself filling in a form with the feeling that he should be counting.

Late that afternoon three men in black suits arrived on his doorstep. One of them said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions about some of the answers you filled in on this form."

Gary couldn't remember any of the answers he'd written on the form. He couldn't remember the questions either. "Now isn't really a good time," he said.

"When would be a good time?"

"Later. Sometime later. Not now."

"We'll be back later."

The men left. Gary couldn't help thinking that he'd landed himself in trouble and that it would be a good idea to hide for a while, until later had passed. The best way to hide would be to pose as Eddie.

Anyone could pose as Eddie if they just wore his hat. It was a very ornate cowboy hat with badges, stickers and plastic flowers attached to it. The hat was his defining characteristic. Even women had successfully posed as Eddie simply by wearing the hat.

Eddie would hire out the hat to anyone who wanted to hide. He charged ten euros a day. Gary walked to Eddie's house, paid the money and walked home as Eddie. Everyone he met on the way believed he was the rightful owner of the hat, including Eddie's mother, who asked him if he was ready to apologise for the bacon.

Gary wore the hat when he went to the shop on the following morning. He met a man called Harold who said, "Eddie! There you are! It's so good to see you."

"Good to see you too," Gary/Eddie said.

"How are things?"

"Can't complain. And yourself?"

"Grand. Grand altogether. How are you getting on with the piano."

"It's... slow."

"I know."

"You know the way."

"I know. I know... Listen, will I break your arm now or do you want to have a drink first?"

"Ah, well, a drink sounds tempting but... No, look, I'm not really Eddie. I'm just pretending to be him."

Gary took off the hat.

Harold laughed and said, "I'm not going to fall for that one again."

"Right," Gary said, and he ran away.

He was quicker than Harold, so he was able to escape, but Harold wouldn't give up. He'd search for Gary, or for Eddie. One of Gary's friends, Lucy, was having a fancy dress party. She dressed as a pirate the last time she went to a fancy dress party, but Sam's cat went as a pirate as well. It was embarrassing for both of them because people kept comparing the costumes. Lucy was trying to think of a way of avoiding such situations at her party. Gary went to see her and he suggested getting everyone to come as Eddie.

She thought it was a great idea. She phoned all of her guests and told them of the changed plans. They had to come up with their own Eddie hats for the party.

Harold was still searching the town for Gary/Eddie that evening when he saw the Eddies making their way across town towards Lucy's house. He wondered if he was going mad. He'd been thinking about Eddie for so long, imagining the joy he'd feel when he finally got a chance to make Eddie feel pain.

He followed the flow of Eddies to the party. Gary was there. He was afraid that Harold would recognise the original hat, so he went out into the back garden. Sam's cat was asleep on the patio, wearing a tiny Eddie hat. Gary put the real hat on the cat and he decided to leave the party. He looked over the wall at the side of the garden and he saw that there was no one in the garden next door. If he could make it over the wall at the other side of that garden he'd find a road and freedom.

So he climbed over the wall and walked across the lawn, but before he made it to the other side he heard a woman's voice. "Trying to escape, are you?" she said. She was pushing an enormous pram towards him.

"That's exactly what I'm doing," Gary said. "I needed to get away from someone at the party."

"Trouble emanating from romantic entanglements?"

"No. Or maybe. I don't know what Eddie has entangled himself in. Someone who thinks I'm Eddie wants to break my arm."

"You're more than welcome to stay here. I'd appreciate the company while I'm looking after Toby, my nephew."

Gary agreed to stay. They sat down at the patio table to have a chat while Toby read a book. The woman's name was Imelda. Her nephew was only two-years-old but he'd been reading for years. His pram was so big he could eat his dinner in it. There was a dinner table in there and he had a high chair. The pram also contained a book case with the entire works of Stephen King. Toby was really more interested in reading Proust, but he didn't want to appear pretentious.

While they were sitting at the patio, Imelda told Gary not to trust the gardener. The gardener was aiming a shotgun at Gary, so it wasn't the best time to hear that the man shouldn't be trusted. Gary asked if they could go somewhere else. He didn't specify a place devoid of gardeners with guns because the gardener was standing just a few feet away, but she seemed to get the hint. She suggested they go into the house, where the gardener wasn't allowed to go.

Gary helped her push the pram inside. This vehicle only barely fitted in through the door. They took the pram to her study, where a fire was lighting. Gary and Lucy sat on armchairs by the fireplace and she told him about her writing.

"I've given up writing, sort of. I'm making pies instead of writing prose. Four-and-twenty blackbirds will repeat my words when they're released from the pies. This is the best way of transmitting my thoughts. Instead of dead black words on a printed page, these blackbirds will emerge and fly away, assuming they survive being cooked. I expect them to be much less troublesome than words made of ink. My fiction keeps upsetting the people I base my characters on."

As she spoke, she was rolling up pieces of paper and throwing them into the fire. Gary asked her if she was burning her writing.

"No," she said. "These are my drawings. Drawings of flames provide me with more warmth than the fires of my drawings of flames, but I burn them anyway. I'm keeping all of my writings. I'll be translating them into blackbirds in pies. The manuscripts are kept on top of the book case over... Oh no! Toby is reading my novella about the woman who broke the axel of a caravan! We must stop him before he gets to chapter two!"

Toby had left his pram and he was sitting on top of the book case. Gary climbed a ladder to get to him, but Toby made his escape through a tiny door near the ceiling. Gary crawled through the door after him. The tunnel at the other side of the door was perfectly suited to a crawling toddler, but much more difficult for a grown man to negotiate. The same was true of the stairs at the end of the tunnel. This led to a corridor big enough for Gary to crouch in. He followed Toby into a tiny library. Toby tried to hide the manuscript amongst the books on a shelf, but Gary saw where it was hidden, and he kept his eyes on it as he walked across the floor. Even if he'd been looking down he might not have noticed the trap door. This only came to his attention after he'd fallen through it. He found himself sliding down a spiralling slide. It would have been enjoyable if he'd known the destination in advance, but the experience was marred by a fear that he'd land in something wet, sticky, hot or pointy.

He landed on cushions in another tunnel. He couldn't go back up the slide, so he crawled to the other end of the tunnel, where he found a trap door above him. He pushed it up and he emerged from the ground in the garden. He was right outside the gardener's shed, a fact he became aware of when the gardener came out with his shotgun.

As soon as Gary got a glimpse of the gardener with the gun he knew his head would soon be a target, so he climbed out of the trap door as quickly as he could and he ran across the lawn to the wall. He climbed over and landed back in Lucy's garden. Eddie's hat was moving across the lawn. Gary picked it up to reveal the cat beneath, and he put the hat on his head just before the gardener looked over the wall.

"Eddie!" the gardener said. "How are things?"

"Couldn't be better."

"Glad to hear it."

"And yourself?"

"I'm struggling on."

"Good."

"Did you ever find that bandage?"

"I did. It was in the piano."

"It's amazing the things you'd find in a piano. My brother found a rabbit in his piano once. Of course, the rabbit had been dead for some time, but the rotting corpse covered the other smells coming from the piano."

"It's amazing the smells you'd get from a piano."

"You'd get some ferocious smells from a piano, or a harpsichord. You'd have to clean them out once a year. Is it okay if I shoot you now?"

"Now isn't really a good time for me."

"Right. When would be a good time?"

"Later."

"Later wouldn't be good for me. I could get it over with nice and quickly right now."

"Why do you want to shoot me?"

"First of all, you convinced me to stop smoking my pipe because you said the smoke was forming shapes of decapitated farm animals and these headless creatures were upsetting people as they floated in front of houses. Then you convinced me to stop making jokes about waking up in an asylum surrounded by men who believed they were scarecrows. You told me that my jokes were offending scarecrows. And then you convinced me to stop whistling because the sound was interfering with messages from the birds' air traffic control centre, and many birds had crashed. One by one you've been divesting my life of its joys. When I couldn't smoke, whistle or tell jokes about waking up in an asylum surrounded by men who think they're scarecrows, I thought I was going mad. And then someone pointed out that just because you told me these things it doesn't mean they're... true... When I..."

The gardener was distracted by the sight of all the Eddies who came out when they heard his raised voice. "Maybe the stress has been affecting your mind," Gary said to the gardener. "You need to relax. Why don't you join the party."

"He's right," Harold said. "I spent too long thinking about breaking Eddie's arm. The stress got to me. But relaxing at the party and talking to Eddie for a few hours has done me the world of good." He'd actually been talking to Lucy for the previous few hours.

The gardener put down his gun and climbed over the wall. Someone got him a drink and he started to relax. He smoked his pipe, whistled and told jokes about waking up in an asylum surrounded by men who believe they're scarecrows. Within an hour he'd lost the need to shoot anyone. For Harold, the party became more stressful as it advanced towards midnight. He was disturbed by the attraction he felt for Lucy/Eddie.

The moose's head over the fireplace is wearing his green hat to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day. What better way to mark the day than by concentrating solely on the horses across the Irish Sea at Cheltenham. The horse racing is much better than the parades. They don't even race in the parades, although the wife's uncle says he got a great tip about a float shaped like a boarded-up house. It's running in the Cork parade.

George's Absence

I love standing outside in the wind. It would be even more enjoyable if the wind stopped throwing things at me. I've been asking people for tips on how to stop books from falling on my head. Some people suggest using an umbrella. Some say cardigans. Some people always say 'cardigans'. I envy those people. I tried always saying cardigans once, but I only lasted ten minutes. The mistake I made was to keep saying it even when I didn't need to say anything. Thanks to 'copy' and 'paste' I wrote a novel called 'Cardigans' in those ten minutes. A three-thousand-word review said 'It was terrible' a thousand times. I could have come up with a better way of saying it was terrible. The people who only say 'cardigans' hardly ever have to say the word because everyone knows what they'll say before they say it. And somehow people understand them.

My cousin Craig had an extraordinary flair for catching spiders using just his hands and his cunning. His ability to fit into small spaces helped as well. When he was eighteen he was six foot tall but he could fold himself up and fit into a suitcase. Relatives and neighbours were always getting him to catch a spider, and then friends of relatives and neighbours started hiring him.

One day he was called to the library to remove a spider. A woman called Edith worked there. She had been in Craig's class in school. He had loved her for years, but he was too shy to say much to her. During all their years in school he only said two words to her ('owl' and 'moo').

When he met her in the library he found it easy to talk to her about spiders. She said to him, "You shouldn't have any trouble catching him. He refuses to move. It's almost as if he's sat down, folded his arms and said, 'I'm not going.' But they don't have arms. Legs. If he folded four sets of legs he wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry."

Craig caught the spider and took it outside. He left it in the shade amongst the roots of a tree, where it could happily refuse to move all day long. Over the following month, Edith called him back three times to catch spiders, and one day she asked him to help her find George.

George would leave evidence of his presence everywhere he went, evidence that could be seen in his absence. He never stayed in one place for too long, except on rainy days when he'd listen to the rain drops fall on the overly-sensitive head of a banjo player who played on the street outside a pet shop. Each drop gave him a minor shock that would be expressed on his banjo. George could look at the banjo player for hours, and leave a pile of things around him.

People rarely saw George, but they knew he'd been around because of the muddy footprints, or the cigarette lighters he was always leaving behind, or the paper coffee cups he carried around with him. But then one day they stopped seeing this evidence and they missed him.

They missed his absence rather than his presence, the absence that reminded them of his presence. They thought that if they were subjected to his presence for longer than five minutes they'd probably want to kill him, but the place felt empty without his absence. There were no cigarette lighters or paper cups to say he had been there but he was gone now. He was just gone now.

Craig agreed to help Edith find George. They followed the path he normally took on his daily rounds. He'd start in a cafe and then go to a corner shop. His next stop would be the bookies, before going back to the cafe for another coffee. Then he'd go to the library.

The man who ran the cafe was too depressed to talk about George. Business was way down since his best customer disappeared. The woman in the shop said that George used to buy the paper there every day. Sometimes he'd get milk or bread as well. He was always very polite but he never had time to stay and chat because he was always in a rush.

When they were walking past the pet shop they asked the banjo player about George. Craig had often been called to catch a spider who was lost on the banjo player's head. George would get a call from this street musician, and it was always difficult to make out what the man was saying on the phone because he could feel every one of the spider's footsteps on his head. When he spoke he sounded a lot like Craig's friend Paudie when he had a ferret down his trousers.

The banjo player told them that he had heard that George was hiding in the fields near where Mr. Maloney built his windmill. Craig and Edith went there. They met Laurence, who was a local wildlife photographer. His hands have been shaking ever since he photographed the beetle-snake. All of his images are blurred.

They asked him if he'd seen George. He showed them a photo he'd taken on the previous day. All they saw was a blurred field, but Laurence pointed to a blurred head peeping out of the ground. "I don't know if it's George," he said, "but it's certainly someone in hiding."

Craig and Edith went to the field. They examined the spot around where they'd seen the head in the photo. They found a piece of green carpet that was covered in moss, twigs and leaves. Edith said, "If you're in there, George, it's only me, Edith. From the library."

A head peeped out from under the carpet. It was George alright. He was glad to see friendly faces. He invited Craig and Edith down into his lair and he told them why he was in hiding.

His trouble arose because of a game of human ten-pin bowling. In this sport, ten people stand as pins. The bowler is also the ball. The ball will stand twenty yards away, facing towards the pins they want to knock down. Then they're blindfolded. They run in a straight line and try to knock over as many of the pins as possible.

The local soccer team were playing the role of the pins. They had lost one player, so they couldn't play soccer until he came back. Their coach made them become pins to keep them fit. He seemed to think that getting hit repeatedly was ideal training for a game of soccer.

George won his match. He needed a strike at the end and he got it. Some of the pins might have gone down easily because they didn't like his opponent, and they all liked George. They seemed happy for him, but George wasn't too pleased when he was paid his winnings in coins.

As he was about to leave, a man known as Hockey arrived, and he challenged George to a game of bowling. You don't say 'no' to Hockey, unless you want trouble. George was always keen to avoid trouble, so he agreed to the game.

Another thing you don't do to Hockey is beat him in a game of human ten-pin bowling. George had no intention of winning, but matters were complicated by the money riding on the game. Hockey suggested a wager of one-hundred euros. George was tempted to say 'no'. He only had twenty euros in his pockets, and Hockey wouldn't appreciate being paid in coins.

Reluctantly, he agreed to the wager, but he came up with a plan. After being blindfolded, he'd run towards the pins, but he'd miss them and keep running. He wouldn't stop running until he got home.

Some of the pins tried to escape when they saw that Hockey was going to play, but he glared at them and they stayed. George nearly lost his nerve when he saw this, but he managed to convince himself that his plan would result in the least amount of trouble, though obviously it was far from being trouble-free.

Unfortunately, the coins in his left pocket were heavier than the ones in his right pocket. He veered to the side as he ran towards the pins, and instead of running to safety he crashed into something resembling an oak tree. When he removed the blindfold he saw that it wasn't an oak tree at all. It was Hockey, who looked furious.

"Assaulting an opponent means immediate disqualification," Hockey said.

"Right," George said. "Complete accident, but I can see your point. Assault is assault. You're absolutely right. So I suppose the same would apply to you? I'd feel awful for you if you accidentally assaulted me and had to be disqualified."

"Thank you for your concern," Hockey said. "But I can put your mind at ease on that point. No accidents will befall you as long as you pay me the money you owe."

"I don't have it on me right now. I have some money on me right now. Will you take coins?"

"Paper would be better. I'll give you until this time tomorrow to pay. I'll focus all my attention on avoiding accidents until then, but after that I'll focus all of my attention on the little birds who eat seeds on my bird table, and if I become a fountain of accidents, so be it."

George didn't have the money, so he chose to go into hiding. Craig suggested getting a part-time job with Mr. Maloney, who was looking for someone to help him build the brick maze in his garden. He's been collecting the bricks for years. He'd smell each one. Most of them were rejected on the basis of smell. Mr. Maloney's brother was writing a book about all the legs in the town. He had no interest in what was above the legs. This is why Mr. Maloney was seen as the normal one in the family, and no one thought there was anything odd about his brick-smelling.

Mr. Maloney agreed to hire George. When he had made enough money to pay off his debt, with a bit extra to cover any interest he might owe, George went to see Hockey. Craig and Edith went with him. Hockey was angry about having to wait for so long, but he was appeased by the interest George offered to pay. He agreed to stop thinking about the birds and to focus his mind on making sure there were no accidents.

George continued working on Mr. Maloney's maze. There was a lawn tennis court in the garden. George used to play matches against Mr. Maloney's brother after work, and he discovered that he had a great flair for the game. He joined the local tennis circuit, and he soon became one of its biggest stars. There were very few spectators at the matches, but people all over the country would read the match reports in the newspapers.

Craig had spent a lot of time with Edith while they were helping George. He felt comfortable talking to her about almost any subject, and not just spiders. He finally found the courage to ask her out on a date. He went to see her in the library one day. He said to her, "Have you ever heard of a play called 'Look at Gerty Moth'?"

"I was just about to ask you that question," she said.

"Really?"

"Yeah. George is taking me to see it. He asked me yesterday. He doesn't know anything about the play, and he doesn't really care. He says I'll be the main attraction of the evening. He's really blossomed since becoming a professional tennis player. He's so romantic. He has you to thank for that."

Craig felt crushed. The man he had helped out of a hole had stolen the heart of the woman he loved. He had never suspected that George loved her as well. When George and Edith went to the theatre they spent most of the play looking at each other rather than at Gerty Moth.

Craig was going to give up on humans and focus on getting to know the spiders better, but things took an unexpected turn when George found himself in more trouble. He entered a mixed-doubles tournament with a model called Cathy. This didn't go down well with Edith, who was angry because of how well he was getting on with his tennis partner. Then a newspaper report on their latest victory implicated them in a match-fixing scandal. This article was even further removed than normal from the realities of the local tennis circuit. It was more like the plot of a thriller. George went into hiding again, and this time he took Cathy with him. He claimed that it was all perfectly innocent, that Cathy had to hide as well, but Edith didn't see it that way. She dumped George. Craig wasn't going to let another opportunity slip by. He asked Edith if she'd like to go with him to see a play called 'Under the Postman's Bloodhound', and she agreed.

The moose's head over the fireplace misses the Winter Olympics. I'm surprised by how many local people are missing it just as much as he is. Some people became devoted followers of winter sports. An ice hockey team and a curling team have been established. The lack of ice hasn't hindered them. If anything, it's a benefit. Ice would only highlight their shortcomings. They still haven't found other ice hockey or curling teams to play against, so they play against each other. You'd think it would be difficult to merge the two sets of rules, but the lack of ice makes these considerations irrelevant.

Dan's Coat

I get the feeling that spring can't be too far away with a welcome full-stop to this winter. A comma would do. One of our neighbours is desperate for spring to arrive and the grass to start growing again so he can try out his new wind-mower. It's a cross between a windmill and a lawnmower. The wind blows it around the lawn and it cuts the grass as it goes. When it's not cutting grass it generates electricity and damages cars.

My uncle Harry went for a walk through the fields on a beautiful summer afternoon. He hadn't gone far when he met one of his neighbours, Dan, who looked as if he was frozen. Harry could see what was wrong. "Why aren't you wearing your coat?" he said to Dan.

"It's been stolen. Or borrowed. Or something. I don't know what the hell it's been but it's gone."

He told Harry the story of how his coat came to be gone. Dan always hung up his coat without taking it off, and then he'd slide out from underneath it without undoing the buttons. He'd climb back into it when he needed to go out. When he climbed into the coat on that morning it seemed more cramped than usual. He noticed that there was someone else inside it, a man who was sound asleep.

Dan woke up the other occupant of his coat and he said, "What are you doing in my coat?"

The man said, "What are you doing in my coat?"

"It's not your coat. It's my coat and we're in the cupboard under my stairs in my house."

The man looked around and he noticed that he was in unfamiliar surroundings. "I've only just woken up," he said. "I must have spent the whole night here. I can remember climbing into my coat when it was hanging up in the pub... That's all I can remember. I must have fallen asleep then."

"I thought the coat seemed crowded when I climbed into it in the pub. But I wouldn't have taken too much notice after a night drinking. I normally veer to my left when walking home after a night of drinking in the pub. I often spend the whole night walking in circles. But you must have provided the perfect weight to balance me because I walked straight home last night."

"It's the darkness I have trouble with. I have no sense of direction in the dark. Sometimes I'd crash into something and I'd realise I'd been walking backwards."

"It's daylight now, so you should have no trouble getting home."

"How am I going to get home without my coat? I'll freeze outside."

"I'll walk there with you."

The man's name was Christy. He was new to the area. He gave Dan directions to his house and they set off towards it, both of them in the same coat. They had no trouble walking together until Christy fell asleep again, and to make matters worse, he started talking in his sleep. "Now I know what they're up to," he said, "their plans to build an organ that produces low notes that reverberate to shake the ground and bring down mountains, encasing mountain-dwellers in the earth, providing them with instructions on how to complete the many tasks needed to construct an underground homeland, a sacred place for a nation of subterranean people busily forgetting views from mountain tops and careers in the theatre, rave reviews for minor roles in plays produced by the foot soldiers for a literary general, frontline troops who limp on despite the clattering sound in their skulls and the bullet scars on their legs, forcing the breath out through whatever hole is left unblocked, letting it sing, being a song of defiance against the underground forces seeking to swallow them into the mire as soon as they stop, to remove their presence from the world and erase all memories of them, extracting those memories from brains even as they're being re-played, terrifying people by revealing the monsters in their heads, the hideous smiling faces that can only be seen when there are no distractions on the mind's cinema screen, a black screen recently deprived of the images of the theatre producer forcing air out through holes, using his fingers to block the holes and play his head like a musical instrument, music of defiance against the forces that shake the ground and bring mountains tumbling down, encasing mountain-dwellers in the earth, enveloping them in darkness punctuated by a flashing light that makes them claw through the earth to a small meeting room hollowed out by other former mountain-dwellers who are distracted from the monsters in their minds by plans to create an underground homeland, with faint memories sometimes superimposed onto the blueprints projected onto the screen. 'Weren't you the gardener in a play I put on about... I can't remember what it was about. There was a man cycling in circles.' 'I might have been. The gardener. Or the man. Or the bike.' I thought I was going to be engulfed in the slime. It was all around me, flowing down the sides of the hollow. I closed my eyes to let the monsters in my head distract me from the horror that was about to engulf me. I saw their smiling faces when I closed my eyes. 'We knew you'd be back,' they said. 'We set a place for you at the dinner table. The fish we're about to eat has so many wires in it you won't need to eat anything with wires in it for weeks. The same applies to anything with cuckoo clocks in which the cuckoos have been replaced by real birds of prey.' But the monsters' dinner was interrupted by something hitting the top of my head. It was a rope ladder. I climbed as quickly as I could. I glanced down to see the luminous green slime occupy the ground I had just been standing on. I kept climbing towards a faint light above. The ladder led me through a narrow opening, and above it there was a room. I could see that a wedding was about to take place and I was going to be the groom, whether I liked it or not..."

Dan was sick of having to listen to Christy rambling on, and he realised that they were lost. They had veered off course when Christy fell asleep. They were at the bottom of a deep valley and Dan wasn't looking forward to climbing the steep hill in a coat that contained a sleeping man. He decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the coat for a minute or two and run to the top of the hill to see if he could figure out where they were.

He was frozen by the time he got to the top of the hill, but his expedition was rewarded by the sight of a familiar landscape. He knew where he was again. He went back down into the valley, but Christy was gone. He must have woken up and walked away, or just walked away in his sleep.

Dan had been wandering the fields ever since, and he was afraid of freezing to death. Harry promised to help him find Christy and the coat. The first place they looked was in the pub. Christy might have gone back there to get his coat.

The bar man told them that Christy hadn't been in all day, but the coat was still there, so Dan wore this to keep warm until they found his coat. They went outside and started asking people if they'd seen a sleeping man walking around in an ill-fitting coat.

When they asked Mrs. Twomey she said, "No, but I have seen a woman wearing an ill-fitting hat. It was Hilda. She of the 'I'm afraid I can't help you' glare. If you really need help she'll suggest a good doctor. Actually, he's a bad doctor. You'll end up needing more help after you leave him, but at least he's cheap. She has a mean streak. There was a tramp singing on the street and she told him not to quit his day job. I was talking to her just twenty minutes ago. I told her I was off to remember where I put my glasses. I left them in front of my eyes somewhere. I asked her if she'd seen my eyes. She said, 'They're right in front of your nose.' 'Of course!' I said. 'My eyes must have popped out when I heard that Veronica picked up a tin of tobacco she found on the ground.' Hilda's eyes popped out when she heard that. She carefully pushed them back in and when she had heard the re-assuring click she said, 'She picked something off the ground!' I told her that this was the story I had heard. Apparently Veronica found the tobacco when she was walking by the river."

"I had a tin of tobacco in the pocket of my coat," Dan said. "Maybe Christy took it out and dropped it there."

Mrs. Twomey nearly fainted when she heard that the tobacco had been in a man's coat. Harry and Dan went to the river. As they were walking along the path on the river bank they found a trail of objects abandoned on the ground. All of these things had been in the pockets of Dan's coat.

They followed the trail, and Dan collected all of the items on the ground as they went. They were led to a tree. Christy was hiding in the tree. He was shocked to see Dan. "I thought you'd been swallowed up by the ground!" he said. "I didn't expect to see you again on the surface. I thought they were after me, so I've been hiding up here for hours."

He came down from the tree and he swapped coats with Dan. He seemed more composed when he was back in his own ill-fitting coat, but he was still afraid of being swallowed by the ground. Harry and Dan walked at either side of him and held his arms as they led him home. He was relieved to be back in the safety of his own house. To show his gratitude, he gave Dan and Harry plenty of things to put in their pockets, so Dan was delighted with the outcome of his adventure.

The moose's head over the fireplace had a tin of tobacco resting on his head one morning last week. He didn't look pleased, so I removed it as soon as I saw it. I've no idea how it got there. The wife's uncle says that someone probably took it out of a pocket while looking for something else. He told us about a friend of his who was always taking things out of his pockets and dropping them on the ground or leaving them on heads. He'd leave a trail of keys, coins, penknives or whatever else he found in his pockets. He took everything out because he was looking for his clarinet. He played with a jazz band, or at least he was a member of a jazz band, but he never played with them because he couldn't find his clarinet. The only member of the band who hadn't lost his instrument was the man who played the blanket.