Shed Fashion

I decided to clean out part of the garden shed on Saturday. The shed was built by my great-grandfather. He made sure it was big enough to store his collection of bicycle wheels, as well as the tools for the garden. There are parts of the shed that I haven't ventured into in years because I'm afraid of what I'll find there. You tend to become more afraid of things like these if you leave them alone for a few years. They'll have evolved into something with eyes and sharp teeth by the time you finally get around to looking at them, and when they look at you for the first time they'll figure out what their teeth are for. I didn't venture into the darkest corners of the shed, but I still found some interesting things during my spring-cleaning. I came across the motorbike helmet my grandfather made, and I found bits of the motorbike he made as well. He crashed it in the fog. In my grandmother's version of the story, he crashed it into the fog, but in my grandfather's telling he was sure he had crashed into something more solid than fog. He just couldn't see what it was because of the fog.

My aunt Bridget once decided to renovate her garden shed after a craze for shed renovation swept the locality. It was started by a man called Cedric, who kept his grandfather's bagpipes in the attic of his house. He expected them to give him some peace at night, but the bagpipes were always snoring or playing in their sleep. People told him he should put them in the shed, but he couldn't do this. His grandfather had made a comfortable bed for them in the attic, and they were happy there. So he started sleeping in the garden shed himself. He made it more homely by putting a carpet on the ground and he brought some of the furniture out of the house. He added an extension to the shed, and then he added another storey to it. Over the course of a year he kept working on it until it was more of a home than his house.

The neighbours started working on their garden sheds as well, and soon everyone was doing it. Patio doors were installed and extensions were added. Bridget thought she had to do something about their shed after Mrs. Ryan had her swimming pool converted into an underground shed. She thought she was making a powerful statement with this. It was like wearing glasses with frames made of gold. Her shed was made out of a swimming pool.

There were a few shed designers operating in the area. One of them was a man called Neil who'd keep making small changes to the design, and he'd purposely avoid thinking about what the final design would look like. It would be a surprise for himself and for his client. Bridget decided against hiring him after inspecting his work at a neighbour's house. You could try to view this construction as a big garden shed but it looked much more like a very small cinema.

Bridget decided to hire a designer called Ellen, who used to be a wedding planner. She'd use potatoes to represent the bride and groom in her models of the weddings. This probably had something to do with the failure of her career as a wedding planner. She found that she was much better suited to designing and building sheds. Her sister, Ruth, would help her with the building.

The sheds were always much bigger after she'd finished working on them. People with small gardens would be expected to sacrifice most of their lawns. Ellen believed that for too long the sheds had been seen as instruments to serve gardens, but the gardens should serve the needs of the shed. There was a bedroom in all of her designs. She said that you'd need to dream in your shed before you could say that it was really yours.

Uncle Harry didn't care in the slightest about the shed, but he didn't object to the renovation because he thought he wouldn't have to do anything. Bridget was very impressed with the design Ellen came up with, and she gave the go-ahead for work to commence.

Ellen and Ruth were making good progress with the renovation, but then one morning they didn't turn up for work. Bridget got a phone call from Ellen, who said that Ruth had run off with a surfer called Stuart. Ellen believed that her sister was making a terrible mistake. Stuart's only achievement in life was winning a trophy at a surfing contest, and if you believed the inscription on the trophy, he won it for eating cardboard. Ellen thought he'd never amount to anything. He believed that he'd already amounted to whatever he was going to amount to, and that this was more than what most people would achieve. He'd show you his trophy if you doubted him.

Ellen went after Ruth to stop her from marrying Stuart. Three days later, Bridget got a phone call from Ellen, who said she was trying to find her sister in Australia, and it could be weeks before she returned. Bridget couldn't wait that long for her new shed, so she made Harry finish the job.

He resented having to work on something he only agreed to because he thought he wouldn't have to work on it. He thought that because he was doing the work, it gave him the freedom to change the design. He started building a tower, much to the annoyance of Bridget. He would have enjoyed building the tower anyway, and a chance to annoy his wife make the task even more enjoyable.

When the tower was higher than the house he decided it was finished. He spent hours on top of it, admiring the view of the fields. When Bridget came into the back garden and told him there was a phone call for him, he was about to leave the tower, but then he noticed that she was trying to hide an axe behind her back. He knew she'd try to knock the tower if he left it, so he stayed up there.

Over the following four days, he only left the tower in the middle of the night or when Bridget had left the house. She had to find a way of luring him out of the tower. She thought about getting one of his friends to tell him about some event or fire or animal he had to see, but his friends wouldn't agree to deceive him, even if she paid them. She'd have to organise something that he'd really want to see, and then let his friends tell him about it.

Seven years earlier, a man called Tommy performed a song in the pub. He was singing it for nearly two hours. The song concerned a mountain he climbed with his brother when they were trying to find an extremely ugly statue of a man examining a dog. The statue was made of gold. The performance became legendary, and people often asked him to sing the song again, but he always refused because of the mental and physical strain he'd have to endure during the performance. But he agreed to give his song its second outing when Bridget paid him to sing it again. At three o' clock on Saturday afternoon he'd stand up in the pub and announce that he'd be singing the song in half an hour (he needed half an hour to do his breathing exercises and to plant his feet firmly on the ground, and with a good distance between them so that he wouldn't fall over during his performance).

At half-past-two on Saturday afternoon, Bridget went out to the back garden and she told Harry she was visiting her sister. "I'll be having dinner with her," she said. "If you want dinner, you might be able to scrape something out of the oven. I haven't cleaned it in a while."

From his tower, Harry could see her driving away. He started thinking about what he might find in the oven, and whether or not he'd be able to identify it.

At ten-past-three, Paul arrived in the back garden. He was one of Harry's friends, and a regular in the pub. He was excited about something, and Harry felt the same excitement when he heard about Tommy's performance. He left the tower and went to the pub with Paul.

The song lived up to expectations. Some people took notes of all the slanderous accusations contained in the lyrics. Tommy timed his collapse perfectly. He summoned up all of his remaining energy for the final note before he passed out to a standing ovation.

Harry was humming the tune as he walked home, but he could see that something was wrong before he reached the house. His tower was absent from the skyline. Bridget had come home after he abandoned his tower, and she had knocked it down. He went around to the back of the house and he saw her smiling as she held an axe. This was just as disturbing as the sight of the shattered remains of his tower.

Bridget's satisfaction didn't last long. She hadn't realised that Harry had triggered another fashion craze when he built the tower. Everyone was adding towers to their sheds, and these made Mrs. Ryan's swimming pool shed look hopelessly old-fashioned. Bridget had to have a tower as well. She wanted Harry to re-build his, and he wanted to build it, but he refused because she wanted him to do it. This is typical of their married life, though it's more common for them to do things that neither of them want to do.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the snooker on TV. He appreciates any sporting contest that can take a few days to complete. The wife's uncle says he plays a sport he invented with some friends of his, and some of their matches can go on for weeks. The game involves imagining a herd of pianos roaming across the field of play. It can take a few weeks before the players develop an adequate mental image of the pianos. They sit on deck chairs and contemplate the field, and they drink whatever substances that might aid them in imagining a herd of pianos. The wife's uncle isn't entirely sure of the rules governing the remainder of the game. The winner is normally decided by tossing a coin.

The Love Potion

I've started cutting the grass again. My grandfather couldn't bear the thought of a long summer cutting grass one year, so he invented a lawn mower that would cut the grass by itself, but it kept sneaking off into the orchard and crashing repeatedly into the trees. It seemed to enjoy doing this.

My cousin Hugh once agreed to help a friend of his called Bertie, who was having some trouble with his love life. He had fallen in love with a woman called Cathy, but she was showing little interest in him. Hugh was even more eager to help his friend when he heard that Dean was also trying to win the heart of Cathy. Hugh didn't like Dean. They were in school together. Dean was a little bit too perfect, and he used to look down on Hugh and his friends.

Hugh believed that Uncle Cyril would be the best person to offer advice on how to impress a woman. Cyril had been boasting about his expertise in romantic matters after taking his wife, Joyce, to a fancy restaurant on Valentine's Day (it was actually the day after Valentine's Day because he had ignored the day itself and incurred Joyce's wrath) and re-uniting a couple who had fallen out after one of them had ignored Valentine's Day (he was really only interested in them because they gave him ice cream).

Cyril was having his breakfast when Hugh called to see him on a Saturday morning. Cyril said that peace was just as important as the food at breakfast. "Coffee, toast and silence," he said. "It's an experience as beautiful as being in a cathedral. But someone will come along and interrupt you, and it'll feel as wrong as a game of tennis in a cathedral."

He glared at Hugh when he said this. Hugh thought that if he was being equated with tennis then he'd never received a greater insult before in his life. Cyril could have said football or hurling instead of tennis. If he'd said wrestling, Hugh would have taken it as a compliment. Or putting a sick dog out of its misery in a cathedral. Hugh would gladly be the termination of a sick dog's life. But no. He had to say tennis, a sport played enthusiastically by Dean. Hugh believed that anything done enthusiastically by Dean must be inherently wrong. Anything done enthusiastically to Dean might well involve tennis rackets, but he'd be the ball.

Hugh didn't want to argue about the insult because he needed Cyril's advice. He told his uncle about Bertie and the need to impress Cathy. Cyril told Hugh about a friend of his whose wife first fell in love with him after she saw him attacking a billboard with an axe. She hated billboards. Cyril suggested that the best way to brew love was to find the thing she hated and attack that. He also told Hugh about another friend who had won a woman's heart by serenading her with a song he wrote himself. She knew that the song came straight from his heart because it was about motorbikes.

Hugh met Bertie in the pub that afternoon and he passed on Cyril's advice. Bertie didn't know what Cathy hated. She seemed to love everything. She always displayed boundless enthusiasm for nature. She had deep wells of sympathy for the little creatures that get eaten by other creatures, and for the creatures who eat them.

They decided to focus on the other idea first: writing a song for Cathy and serenading her. They had to write a song that sounded as if it emanated from Bertie's heart. As they were exploring his heart, a man called Oliver came over to them and asked if they'd like to buy a love potion. Bertie said, "I don't need a love potion. I sweat love potion."

"Really?" Oliver said. "Can I buy some of it? Because to be honest, my love potion doesn't really work."

"You want to buy some of my sweat?"

"I could make money for both of us if it actually works. I'm making some money with this stuff and it has no effect."

"It's not the sweat that does it. It's my looks. And my personality. And my charm."

"No, it's probably the sweat," Oliver said. He was right to think that Bertie's looks, personality and charm wouldn't be of much help when he tries to seduce women, but he was wrong about the sweat. But Hugh saw a chance to make some money out of the situation, so he stepped in. He said he was Bertie's business manager, and that he could supply some of the sweat. It was guaranteed to work, he said, and Oliver would make a fortune from it, even after Hugh and Bertie took their fifty percent share of the profits. Oliver agreed to this. They arranged to meet on the following evening, and Hugh promised to have obtained a large quantity of Bertie's sweat by then.

Hugh was afraid that Oliver would find out about Bertie's inability to gain Cathy's affections, and that he'd come to the conclusion that the sweat was worthless. There had only been one occasion in the past when Bertie's sweat seemed to work. It happened when he met a woman in the pub, and she told him it was her ambition to work with children in Africa. He said it was his ambition to do something with buckets. He didn't have to say much more before she agreed to go back to his place. But she turned out to be a con artist. He gave her three hundred euros to pay for a well in Africa, but she spent it in Galway instead.

Hugh thought that Oliver would need to be convinced that Bertie's sweat was effective, so he paid a friend of his called Karen to talk to Bertie in the pub while Hugh was meeting Oliver there on the following evening. She'd act as if Bertie's charms were irresistible.

Before that meeting with Oliver, Hugh would have to collect Bertie's sweat, a task that neither of them were looking forward to. Bertie was more repulsed by exercise than Hugh was repulsed by Bertie's sweat. They tried to think of the money they'd make rather than the unpleasant aspects of the task.

Bertie went jogging. He had only gone about a hundred yards before he had to stop for a rest, but he was already sweating profusely by then. He took off his T-shirt, and Hugh squeezed the sweat out of it. He only got a few drops from it, and even this made him feel slightly nauseous. They'd both end up needing medical attention if they continued trying to harvest sweat, so Hugh told Bertie that a few drops was all they needed. It was so potent that it needed to be mixed with water before it was safe for people to use.

Bertie believed this, but Oliver wouldn't. Hugh needed some other substance that could be passed off as Bertie's sweat. He went to see Cyril again and he asked if he could use some of the things in the garden shed. Cyril had accumulated many strange substances over the years. Some were to kill weeds or to make plants grow. Some were to keep evil spirits away, or just to keep people away. Hugh poured some of these substances into a bucket. He ended up with two gallons of a liquid that was just as unpleasant as Bertie's sweat.

He poured this liquid into empty bottles and he brought them to the pub on the following evening. As he was handing them over to Oliver, Bertie was waiting at the bar. Karen came over to him and she started flirting with him. She was also thinking of the money she'd make rather than the unpleasant aspects of this task. Oliver was clearly impressed by the effect of Bertie's sweat.

Hugh had expected Bertie to ignore the attentions of Karen because of his love for Cathy, but he was encouraging her rather than resisting her. After Oliver left, Hugh broke up their party and he reminded Bertie of the task at hand: climbing to the peak of Cathy's heart before Dean got there first and planted his flag. Bertie said he'd written a song that was sure to melt her heart. It expressed a great affection for small animals that get eaten and it was obviously heartfelt because it also expressed a great affection for gambling.

After a few drinks to calm Bertie's nerves, they went to Cathy's house. Hugh hid behind the trees at the other side of the road. He was looking forward to this performance. Bertie started playing his guitar and singing his song. Cathy was at the front door before he got to the end of the first line. She seemed upset with him. "I've just been to the pub," she said. "I thought I might meet you there. I saw you with Karen, and I said to myself, 'It appears as if I don't want to meet him after all. I suppose I'll just go home again.' I certainly don't want you performing a song on my property."

She slammed the door. Bertie was heartbroken, but Hugh said there was a glittering silver lining to this. "She went to the pub to see you," he said to Bertie. "She's upset with you now, but that's a sign that she cares about you."

"She used to care about me. Now I know what she hates. It's me. If I started attacking myself she might start liking me again. But then she'd stop hating me and she wouldn't like to see me attacking myself. She'd start hating me for attacking something she cares about. And then I'd have to start attacking myself again."

"Just give her a few days and she'll want to meet you again."

Dean made his move on the following day. She agreed to go to a restaurant with him. Bertie was devastated when he heard the news, but Hugh tried to keep his spirits up. His spirits nearly received a fatal blow when they heard that Dean was playing tennis with Cathy. Both Bertie and Hugh were sickened by the very thought of this.

A week after Hugh had delivered the love potion to Oliver, they arranged to meet again in the pub. Bertie was there as well. Oliver gave Hugh a brown envelope and he said, "Fifty percent of the profits, as promised."

Hugh opened the envelope. There was over a thousand euros inside.

"Bertie's sweat really does work," Oliver said. "Business is booming. People are gulping it down."

Hugh said, "You're making people drink... Bertie's sweat?"

"Even though it tastes awful they still drink it because it tastes so good."

Hugh was shocked when he heard this. He had assumed that they were daubing it on their necks, or on whatever part of their body they wanted to attract women to. Bertie's sweat wouldn't kill them, but the substances from Cyril's shed might.

Dean came over to them. Hugh thought he was there to gloat about his success with Cathy, but he was actually there to meet Oliver. He wanted to purchase more of the love potion.

"It's the best thing I ever bought," he said. "It's brought love to my life, and that's priceless."

"Do you know what's in that potion?" Bertie said.

"What?"

"My sweat. That's all that's in the potion. You've been drinking my sweat. How does it feel to know that the love in your life is built on a foundation that's floating in a sea of my sweat?"

Dean looked at Oliver, who tried to avoid making eye contact. Dean felt sick, and he rushed outside.

Soon everyone knew about the contents of the love potion, and sales collapsed. Hugh was happy to let people think that they'd been drinking Bertie's sweat because the reality might have been much worse.

Dean lost his confidence after he stopped using the potion. He believed that his success with Cathy was due to this drink, and when he had to rely on his charm, looks and personality he started acting strangely. He was trying far too hard to impress her. He tried serenading her with a song he wrote in praise of fireplaces. He wrote numerous vitriolic songs attacking Freud.

She lost interest in Dean, leaving the way clear for Bertie. He became supremely confident because he thought that his sweat was an outstanding love potion. She liked his confidence. He liked the way she loved everything, even tennis. When Hugh heard that they were playing tennis he began to regret ever helping to bring them together.

The moose's head over the fireplace has had feathers in his antlers every morning for the past week. I think there's a bird hiding somewhere in the house. The wife's uncle says that he had hundreds of birds hiding in his house last winter. He never noticed them until he went to pick up the phone one evening and he picked up a magpie instead. His neighbour had a family of pigs living in his house, but they moved out because of the dirt in the kitchen.

The Captain of a Ship

Every time I look over the wall at the end of the garden I see a donkey staring back at me. I can detect a look of intelligence in his eyes. I often wonder what he's thinking when he looks at me. Hopefully he's thinking 'I can detect a look of intelligence in his eyes'. According to the wife, he's almost certainly thinking 'Why on earth is he wearing that ridiculous hat?'. There's nothing ridiculous about this hat. My grandfather used to wear it, and tourists were always asking if they could take photos of it. You only had to look at his hat to know that he was a man of intelligence.

My cousin Jane and her best friend, Claudia, joined a nature appreciation society. Their activities ranged from pointing at clouds and saying 'ooh' to pointing at trees and saying 'aah' to pointing at young rabbits and saying 'aww'. One year they decided to have a picnic. A lot of planning and preparation went into this event. Eight rugs were stitched together so they could all sit down as a group. Sandwiches and cakes were made, and various drinks were concocted. A committee was assigned the task of finding a location that would provide plenty of things to point at.

They came up with an idyllic spot amongst the wild flowers on a hillside. The view of the valley elicited numerous 'ooh's and 'aah's and a round of applause. There weren't any clouds to point at, but the uninterrupted sunshine enhanced their view of the valley.

The picnic couldn't have been going any better until an unwanted guest arrived. A bee made everyone stand up, and some of the society members started to panic. Jane tried to take control of the situation. "Just point at it and say 'ooh'," she said. "It can sense your fear."

But no one listened to her. Some of them were pointing at the bee and screaming. The ones who weren't panicking were gathering up the plates and cups as if the picnic was over.

"We can't let ourselves be beaten by a bee," Jane said. "We have to stand up to it. We must sit down and finish our picnic."

The bee won. Within a minute of its arrival, all traces of the picnic were gone. "We have to show the bee that we won't be intimidated by it," Jane said to Claudia as they walked home through the fields.

"It's only a bee," Claudia said.

"Exactly. It's only a bee, and everyone ran as if it was a man with a bomb strapped to his head. We must have another picnic, and stay till we're ready to go home, not when a bee decides our picnic is over."

"I don't think you have much chance of convincing anyone else to re-stage our picnic."

Jane and Claudia came across another group of people having a picnic. They were eating burgers, which Jane didn't approve of for a picnic, but she had to admire their discipline. They all remained in formation on the rug when a bee arrived. They took no notice of their unwanted guest, and the bee left in defeat.

Jane had a chat with the group's leader. He said he was the captain of a tree and the other people there were his crew. They occupied an oak tree on a farm because they wanted to save it. Bernard, the farmer, was planning on cutting it down because it was blocking his view of a shed, and he wanted to be able to see that shed from his house because he was afraid that thieves would break into it and steal his tractor. It was no ordinary tractor. He had been adding things to it for years. When he pressed a button in the cab, a speedboat would be launched from the back.

Bernard tried everything to get the captain and the crew down from the tree. Threats didn't work. Carrying out the threats didn't work either. Not even bullets frightened the occupants of the tree. He tried to tempt them down with a bath full of gravy, but this failed as well. He made a bath of gravy every day. To add flavour, he'd stick his hand into it, but he never told anyone what he did with his hand before putting it into the gravy. This was the secret ingredient.

The captain and his crew were successfully thwarting Bernard's plans until a mutiny occurred on the tree. The crew wanted food from a take-away but Bernard refused to go there, so they took over the tree and set sail for this fast-food place. When they realised that it would take too long to sail there, they got down and walked. They took the captain with them. When they got back to the farm, the tree had been cut down.

They wanted revenge for what had happened, and the crew agreed to let the captain lead them in this mission. In return for their support, he let them have the burgers. He told Jane that it wasn't enough to be a strong leader or to appease your crew with burgers. What you needed was a common enemy, someone or something to inspire hate in every member of your crew.

Jane realised that this is what they needed for their picnic. There was no point in making the bee the enemy because she could never convince her fellow society members to take on a bee. She decided that the common enemy should be Shelly, who was a journalist with the local newspaper. Shelly was always writing stories about locals making fools of themselves. The disaster of the picnic would be just the sort of thing she'd be interested in, as long as it was made to look worse. Jane anonymously submitted the story of the picnic to Shelly. She exaggerated the terror caused by the bee. According to the story that appeared in the paper, some members of the nature appreciation society hid in barrels or under rugs, some fainted, and one of them went to Scotland.

Every member of the society was furious with Shelly when they saw the story. Jane had no trouble convincing them to re-stage the picnic, just to prove that they weren't afraid of the bee. Before embarking on their second picnic, they held a practise session in Jane's back garden. They all sat in formation on the grass, and they focussed their minds on Shelly when Jane imitated the sound of a bee. No one ran away during this practise session, but it would certainly be more difficult to keep their formation if a real bee arrived. Jane hoped that their hatred of Shelly would be enough to counteract their fear of the bee.

A photographer from the paper turned up for the re-run of the picnic. Jane was hoping that a bee would arrive as well, just so they'd have a chance to prove that they wouldn't be intimidated by it. As it turned out, hundreds of bees arrived, and they were all swarming around Bernard. He was fleeing through the fields, trying to get away from the bees. The captain of the tree got this idea for revenge from Jane. His crew put bee hives into Bernard's shed. When Bernard went into the shed to check on his tractor he was engulfed by the bees, and while he was distracted with them, the crew cut down his satellite dish.

The nature appreciation society were very nervous of the bees at first, but they soon realised that their enemies were only interested in Bernard. The photographer was interested in Bernard as well. Shelly wrote a story about him. In the background of the photo in the paper, you could see the nature appreciation society calmly engaged in a picnic without any hint of panic. According to Shelly, Bernard jumped into the river to get away from the bees, and he had to stay there for three hours because the bees waited around for him to come out.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys listening to stories from our local newspaper. Some weeks are slow news weeks in these parts. Sometimes the only articles you'll find in the paper are instructions on how to fold the pages into paper airplanes. Last week's edition could be turned into a bi-plane, which is more than can be said of the national newspapers.

A Ramble in the Country

You could almost believe that this is a summer day. Only the bare trees give the game away. You'd have to visit Rose, one of our neighbours, to see trees that show signs of growth. The bread that grows on her trees is starting to sprout. She's been developing a tree that will produce bread already sliced.

My cousin Ted and his wife, Anne, once went out for a walk in the country on a fine July morning. They climbed to the top of a hill and they spent a few minutes admiring the spectacular scenery beneath them. On their way down the hill they met a man who was sitting on a stone wall. He was busy ignoring the view, looking at his head in a mirror instead. He said he couldn't think of scenery nicer than his own head. "And not just the face. I love the back of my head as much as the front. Some people say I'm vain, but they're wrong. If I was vain, would I have these stains on my trousers? No. I just love my head, the outside of it anyway. It's much nicer on the outside than it is on the inside."

He walked with Ted and Anne as they travelled the narrow roads. He told them about some of the adventures his head had led him into, and the awards it had won.

When they emerged from the hills and valleys they came to a vast, flat land. They walked down a long, straight road, and no cars passed by. They came across an elevator at the side of the road. The woman who operated it had a diamond on her forehead, and she claimed that this gem was another eye. It was held in place by an elastic band that went over her ears. She loved the sound it made when the wind blew on the side of her head, and the wind was very strong at the top of the elevator. A narrow tower had been erected next to the elevator. There was a single room on each level.

The man who was fond of his head asked her which side of her head she liked most. "That's a difficult question to answer," she said, "because I've separated my head into sectors. I store different types of information in different places. So if you were to ask me about my family, I'd say, 'Family, 3rd floor, section A, room two.' And then I'd be able to access all the information on my family. Everything I learnt in school is kept in the basement of my brain, and I find it much easier to retrieve things from it when I'm in the actual basement." She pointed down when she said this.

"There's a basement here?" Anne said.

"There is. I'll take ye there."

After they all got into the elevator she pressed a tiny silver button near the ground. The doors closed, and shortly afterwards they could feel the elevator descending. On the way down, the operator introduced herself. Her name was Maeve.

When the doors opened they saw a basement that was bigger than an airplane hanger. Thousands of people were working at desks or putting files into cabinets or making deliveries on scooters.

"I'd never have guessed that anything like this would have been hidden underneath the ground," Ted said.

"That's good," Maeve said, "because it's supposed to be a secret."

"Doesn't the elevator draw attention to it?" Anne said.

"People think the elevator only goes up. And no one would suspect that if you had a basement you wanted to hide, you'd put an elevator over it."

"If it's meant to be a secret, why are we here?"

"Hmmm... I'm not sure what part of my brain I should visit to answer that. Because it's not exactly a question of fact. Some people would question the fact that any of us are anywhere, so..."

"Assume we all exist, and we're in the basement. Is there a place in your brain where you file the decisions you make?"

"There are lots of places where my decisions go. It depends on the type of decision. I'm just trying to remember what sort of decision it was."

"Is there a place where you store your decisions on what sort of decisions you make?"

"I don't know."

Ted said, "Why don't you just try to remember the instructions they gave you when you got the job."

"Right. Fourth floor, Section F, room... Oh God no! 'Never take anyone into the basement'. That's what they said, and they underlined the word 'never' by moving their fingers from side to side in the air. I'm going to get fired!"

"Don't panic," Anne said. "I don't think anyone has seen us yet. They're all too busy at work and we're hidden over here in the shadows. We'll quietly go back up in the elevator and no one will ever know we were here."

"The elevator tends to draw attention to itself when someone is going up. If I press the button to open the door, it'll play music that everyone hates. They'll all look in our direction. Then I'd get fired, and it wouldn't be so easy for ye to get out of here. Our best hope is to stay in the shadows at the edges, and find some other way out. We could go to the janitors' room, and ye could pretend to be janitors."

They walked around the edge of the room until they came to a glass door. This led them to a long corridor, and the janitors' room was at the end of this. Two janitors were asleep inside. Maeve, Ted, Anne and the man who was fond of his head tip-toed across the floor to the cupboard where the spare uniforms were kept. Maeve found three new uniforms, and her guests managed to get into them without waking the snoring janitors.

They left the room through the back door. Maeve led them down another corridor, but they were stopped by a man who said, "Come with me."

He took them to a small room that was lit by a fluorescent bulb. A man was bending over a strange machine in the corner of the room.

The man who had brought them there said, "Jason was trying to fix the anorak machine and he got his arm stuck in it. See what ye can do to get him out. And if ye can't get him out... just leave him there, I suppose. I have work to do."

The man who had work to do left to do his work. The man who was fond of his head said to Jason, "Did you get your arm stuck in it?"

"I did," Jason said. "I was trying to fix it, but... I got my arm stuck in it."

Maeve said to him, "Jason, if we get you out, could you do us a favour in return?"

"Name it."

"These janitors need to go upstairs. Is there a delivery you could get them to make?"

"I think I could manage that. Roddy in deliveries owes me a favour. I freed his head when he got it stuck in a floating machine."

"Ah, the joys of a free head," the man who was fond of his head said. "You'd promise anything to the person who restored your head to its natural, wild state."

It took them half an hour to free Jason's arm from the gears in the anorak machine. After getting his arm to thank its rescuers by shaking hands with them, he took them to Roddy's office.

Roddy's head held vivid memories of the time it was stuck, and he was only too happy to arrange for Ted, Anne and the man who was fond of his head to deliver a package 'upstairs'. He told them they'd be delivering a small box to a man who lived in a lighthouse. They'd travel there using a cart pulled by two old horses, and they'd disguise themselves as peasants.

Ted said, "Wouldn't we stand out as peasants? Peasants are more or less extinct these days, at least in these parts. Give it another twelve months and they might make a comeback, but go up there now and you could walk for miles without seeing a single peasant."

"You don't see too many elevators out in the middle of nowhere either, but it's been a perfect disguise for this operation."

Roddy took them to the costume room, where they were fitted out with their peasant clothes, and then they were led to the mail room, where the horses were waiting with the cart. The man who was fond of his head climbed into the back of the cart with the package. Ted and Anne sat up front.

"The package contains a map," Roddy said. "Ye must deliver it to Bramwell Battenosh at the lighthouse. He's a famous historian."

"I've never heard of him," Ted said.

"Here's a copy of his memoirs. Study this book on the way, because he'll be upset if he thinks ye don't know all about him. He wrote it when he was a famous historian, before he actually became a real historian, but he's never been interested in history. In later editions of the book he added a final chapter about being a historian, but ye don't need to read that. He's only likely to ask questions about his fame."

"How could he be a famous historian without being a historian, or without being interested in history?"

"To be a famous historian you just have to present a TV show. After becoming famous on his show, he studied history by examining past times through accounts of people getting struck by lightning. This is what led him to the lighthouse. A former lighthouse keeper was struck by lightning when he climbed to the top of the lighthouse to say something to God. Admittedly, it wasn't a very nice thing he said."

Before they left, Roddy gave Anne an envelope and he said, "Ye'll meet Clement at the exit. Give him this. He might ask if you like having guitars broken over your head. Say 'yes'. Or 'no'. Or just answer truthfully. It doesn't really matter. It's just something he's interested in."

Roddy, Maeve and Jason wished them luck and they set off on their journey. The horses pulled the cart up a spiralling ramp that took them back towards ground level. Clement was sitting at a desk near the exit. He was reading a newspaper when they arrived. Anne gave him the envelope and he opened it. He absentmindedly read the letter inside. He didn't say anything about guitars. His mind was still occupied with a newspaper story about a radio station for dolphins.

He opened the doors to reveal a blue sky above. Ted, Anne and the man who was fond of his head left the underground world. The doors were closed, and they were covered with gorse bushes to conceal the exit.

On the way to the lighthouse, the man who was fond of his head read Bramwell's memoirs. He was interested in history, and not in fame, so he only read the final chapter. He learnt that Bramwell spends most of his time in the lighthouse studying the history of the ocean, hoping to figure out what it's going to do next. He focuses his mind on the sea rather than on the land behind him. Every time he looks back towards the land through his telescope he can see himself looking through a telescope.

Late in the afternoon, they were still ten miles away from the coast when they came across a ramshackle tower out in the middle of nowhere. The man who was fond of his head pointed to the man standing on top of the tower and he said, "From here he looks just like Bramwell." He showed the photo on the front of the book to Ted and Anne, and they agreed that there was a definite resemblance.

The man who was on top of the tower set out to become the man at the bottom of the tower, and while he was striving to accomplish this, Anne scanned through the first chapter of the book. She said, "There's something about being abandoned at birth, an orphanage and a long-lost twin brother."

When the man at the bottom of the tower came into being they noticed his unkempt look, whereas Bramwell looked as if he was always perfectly groomed. This man's clothes were torn. His hair and beard were growing wild. Anne showed him the photo on the cover of the book and she said, "It must be like looking in a mirror?"

"What's a mirror?" the man said.

Judging by his appearance, it seemed plausible that he had never used a mirror.

They told him about Bramwell and his long-lost twin, and they took him to the lighthouse. His name was Higgins.

Bramwell heard the cart approaching, and he went outside to greet them. As soon as Bramwell and Higgins saw each other there was an instant recognition that they'd found their long-lost twins.

Higgins got down from the back of the cart, walked over to his brother and said, "So you thought you'd get away from us, y' little fecker."

"I was only an infant when I was taken away."

"I've heard it all a thousand times before."

"You've heard nothing before."

"I've heard it all in the womb and it's been ringing around in my head ever since."

"You weren't exactly a barrel of laughs in the womb. I had to put up with your tiger imitations before you even knew what a tiger was."

"I knew exactly what a tiger was, and is. It's the tiger that doesn't know what a tiger is."

"Typical. It's always someone else's fault. Like that time you said we were going to meet the Huguenots..."

Ted, Anne and the man who was fond of his head put the package on the ground and they left with the horses and the cart. They listened to the raised voices as they departed, and they couldn't help smiling. It was heartening to hear them fighting like brothers, even after being apart for so long.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been listening to the sound of the hang-gliders and the other people stuck in the trees after the strong winds. They sing songs to pass the time. They sing to each other, and they compose songs for each other as well. I don't know if their minds are going or if it's just a game they're playing, but for the past three days all their songs have been about rosary beads made out of eggs and if you pray too hard you'll crack the eggs and tiny birds will emerge and fly around your head.