How to use an evening

Many local people have been looking for alternative sources of income since the recession began. The farmer who owns the land around our garden bought an old ice cream van. Instead of paying a mechanic to fix the engine, he put the van on a trailer, and he uses his tractor to drive it through the fields. He's started selling more than just ice creams. When I was working in the garden on Saturday I was able to buy some weed killer and a choc-ice without even leaving the garden.

My cousin Nicola had to endure regular spells of boredom when she was in her late teens. Growing up in the countryside near a small town began to lose its appeal when she lost interest in fields.

During the summer holidays she'd meet her friends, Jennifer and Ruth, every day. They'd go for walks and talk about whatever came into their heads. They'd meet friends in the park or go to the wall. In the evenings, Nicola would search her head for anything worth talking about, but in looking through all the things her mind had acquired during the day she rarely found anything of value. She was nearly old enough to go to the pub, but spending the evening there seemed like just another way of doing nothing.

She was walking out of the supermarket one day when she saw Jason getting money out of a cash machine. She'd been to primary school with him, but she hadn't spoken to him in years. He'd changed a lot since she'd last seen him. He had long blond hair, but the thing that intrigued her most was the guitar case he was holding. She asked him if he played guitar, which seemed like a stupid question, but she couldn't think of any other way to bring up the subject. He was delighted to have a chance to talk about it. He told her he was the lead guitarist in a metal band called Fire in the Black Fog.

"I never knew there were any bands around here," Nicola said.

"There are four that I know of. There are probably more, but they usually keep their heads low until they figure out how to play their instruments with both of their hands at the same time, and then they'll start trying to use their fingers. Apart from Potato Staples. They've been going for about six months now and they're having trouble using both hands, but they're perfectly happy showing off how backward they are."

"Wow. I always saw this place as a sort of a cultural wasteland."

"It is."

"Yeah. I suppose I always saw it as a cultural hole, but now I see it's slightly better than that. It's a wasteland."

"It is a cultural hole. Do you want to hear me play something?"

"I'd love to."

"I was just on my way to the park to play. That's why I have my acoustic guitar with me. I like playing in the park in the sun."

In between playing songs for her, he told her about his blue electric guitar. The dials on it were black, and so was the fret board. He told her about how he liked fires. His blond hair had a slight curl and he thought it looked like flames. He grew his hair long to say 'I like fires'. He normally had to say the words as well because no one read that into his hair. He had a girlfriend called Michelle. "Her friends say I'm mad," he said, "and I say, 'Yeah, I know I'm mad.' And they say they have a different sort of mad in mind. I say I know the sort of mad they have in mind and that's the sort of mad I am, and I know I am. They say they're sure that my idea of mad isn't the same as theirs because their idea of mad is something bad, and I say that's exactly the idea I have. I had a conversation just like that once with someone who was saying I was stupid."

He invited Nicola to watch the band rehearse in his parents' garage later that evening. She said it sounded a hundred times more exciting than anything else she could use the evening for. He gave her directions to his parents' house and he said he'd see her later.

Nicola went to meet Jennifer and Ruth. She told them all about Jason. She thought they'd share her enthusiasm, but Jennifer said he sounded like an idiot.

"At least he's got some spark in his head," Nicola said.

"And we don't?"

"No. And I don't mean that ye're stupid. I just mean that ye don't have that spark."

"What spark?"

"Do you remember the time Rachel explained to you that you could never be an Eskimo, and you just didn't get it because you didn't fully understand what an Eskimo was?"

"Yeah."

"This is like that. You don't have that spark, and you won't understand what you're missing because you can't comprehend what it is. I envy you. You're happy with all this, with next to nothing. People like me need more."

"'People like me'. You'd swear you were Roald Amundsen. He went to the Arctic. He probably met Eskimos."

"Jason might not be the most intelligent person in the world, but you can see that the spark has lit a fire and it's coming out in the flames of his hair."

"I know what Eskimos are now."

Nicola went to see the band rehearse that evening, but it didn't take long for her enthusiasm to drain away. They said they had to get ready mentally before they started playing. To Nicola, this looked like standing in the garden, and there was a perfectly good garden at home that she could be standing in. Michelle was there as well, and she seemed happy to spend the evening standing and yawning. Niall, the lead singer, smiled to himself every now and then. Whatever thoughts he was playing with, Nicola hoped that he'd keep them to himself. The rest of the band looked as if there was nothing going on behind their blank expressions. The breeze brought life to their hair, and Nicola got the impression that there was more going on outside their heads than inside. Sometimes Michelle seemed to be deep in thought, and sometimes she shared her thoughts with the rest of them. After half an hour of silence she said, "Why do biker gangs always say 'yah-ha' or 'whoo-hoo' or... 'hey hey' when they ride off? In films anyway."

Nicola was in desperate need of a conversation, but she decided to pass on this one.

Another ten minutes of silence followed, and then Jason said to her, "Do you want to hear us play?"

"Yeah, I would."

Their music was just as tedious as the silence. Nicola would have preferred if they'd kept it inside their heads, or whatever part of their bodies they stored it in. Niall sang lines like 'Anger take my hand. I want to kill the land'. To say he 'sang' wouldn't do justice to what he actually did to those lines. A serious assault or even murder would be closer to what he was doing, which is exactly what those lines deserved.

Michelle was deep in thought throughout the song. When it finally came to an end, after a guitar solo, bass solo, drum solo and a minute of Niall kicking a wheel barrow, the silence that followed seemed like a void. Nicola felt she had to fill it with applause. Her appreciation sounded half-hearted, but Jason thanked 'the audience'. Michelle said to Niall, "If you were part of a motorbike gang and ye were riding away, what would you say?"

"I'd tell them to eff off," Niall said.

"Who's 'them'?" Nicola said.

Niall didn't respond.

On their way to the park he was much more talkative. He kept shouting 'eff off' to the people in cars who were shouting abuse at him. When they were walking past the Town Hall, all of the band shouted abuse at the empty building. The source of their anger was the Mayor, who was always known as Larry, even though that wasn't his name. He'd recently sparked a controversy with remarks he made during a radio interview. One of his political rivals had bought an electric car to show how environmentally friendly he was. When Larry was asked what he was doing to help the environment he said he once used an electric wheelchair. It was great fun, he said. He was tempted to go away in it and leave its rightful owner by the side of the road. He couldn't make a quick getaway in an electric wheelchair, but it wasn't as if she'd be chasing him.

"We're going to play a prank on Larry," Jason told Nicola. "My brother made a paint bomb. It's basically just fireworks in a paint tin. We're going to set it off in Larry's garden."

When Nicola heard this she struggled to contain her excitement. "When are ye going to do it?" she said.

"We haven't set an actual date for it. Maybe tomorrow."

"Let's do it now."

"I don't know. We were going to make a banner first, something that we'd leave in his garden to explain why we did it."

"We can make it now. What will the banner say?"

"'Eff off'," Niall said.

"That would certainly be to the point, but I'm not sure what point it would be to."

"What about 'Disabled people did this'," Jason said. "That way he'd never know it was us."

"Why don't we just say 'Enabled'," Nicola said. "Everyone will know what it means."

"I suppose so." Jason didn't seem very enthusiastic.

"Ye do want to go through with this, don't ye?" Nicola said.

"Oh yeah. Absolutely. We were just waiting for a date. And now we have it. It's today. And that's good."

The others nodded.

They made the banner on a piece of cardboard. Just after the sun went down they set off for Larry's house. Nicola got the impression that her accomplices didn't share her enthusiasm. As they approached the Mayor's house, Jason said, "Maybe we need a bigger banner."

"The size of the banner doesn't matter at all," Nicola said. "Its message is enormous. This is going to be fun, and we're doing something worthwhile as well."

Only Nicola looked as if she was having fun. After Jason had put the paint bomb on Larry's lawn he said, "Maybe we should test the bomb first. What if it explodes or something?"

"That's what it's supposed to do."

"Oh yeah. Well what if it doesn't explode?"

"And what if you take it home to test it and it does explode? Your parents' garden would be covered in paint."

"Oh yeah. I could do it in my bedroom."

"Then your bedroom would be covered in paint."

"Oh yeah. But my bedroom already is covered in paint, so it wouldn't really make any difference."

"You won't be able to use the bomb here if it goes off in your bedroom."

"Oh yeah. But I've been thinking of painting my bedroom a different colour. And if I used the paint bomb there I'd have the job done in, like, a second or something. So..."

Nicola lost patience. She took Jason's cigarette lighter and lit the fuse. They all ran away, and as they made their escape they heard the sound confirming that the bomb had worked. Nicola was so excited she shouted 'yah-ha', 'whoo-hoo' and 'hey hey'. Michelle and Fire in the Black Fog were terrified of getting caught.

They saw the aftermath of the explosion in a photo that appeared on the front page of the local newspaper. The prank went down very well amongst the locals. Jason and his bandmates spent weeks boasting about how they did it.

Nicola chose not to spend any more time with them. She went back to Jennifer and Ruth. When she met them on the day after the prank, Ruth told her that they'd formed their own band.

"Can I join?" Nicola said.

Ruth said yes, but Jennifer said, "No, I don't think that would be possible now. We've already done a song about snow. And I think it would disrupt the balance of things if... y' know... we had someone in to... y' know... It's a very finely balanced song."

"Can I hear it?"

"It's very... y' know... It only really sort of exists in our heads and... It's very finely balanced at the moment."

"I'd love to hear it anyway."

"I suppose we could do a bit of it."

Jennifer started singing and Ruth joined in half-heartedly. That half faded to nothing within seconds. Jennifer sang, "Look at the snow... The snow is falling... And I forgot my... glasses." She stopped singing and said, "Alright, you can join."

"Thanks. This is going to be so much fun. That song could really be good."

"Yeah. We just need to work on the balance."

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys listening to the sound of the ice cream van and the tractor engine. I like the sound as well. I find it relaxing because it suggests a slow pace of life. Sometimes you can hear those sounds for half an hour as the old tractor makes its way through the fields. The farmer often brings his kids in the trailer, and they play traditional versions of ice cream van standards.

A Gift Donkey

I found the site of my grandfather's phone box at the back of the garden. He installed phones in the shed and in the glasshouse as well. He loved to hear the sound of the phone ringing. Sometimes it sang, but it had a terrible singing voice. A plain, old-fashioned ring was like music in comparison.

My cousin Charlie lived near a horse-trainer called Bob. People were always asking Bob for tips. They'd try to read between the lines when he told them to eff off. Bob was a man of few words. Usually only two would suffice. You'd need a magnifying glass to read anything into one of his statements, but the eager gamblers always managed to glean something, and occasionally they'd get it right. He once told Charlie's neighbour, Mr. Fleming, where to go (it was somewhere unpleasant), and Mr. Fleming used this information to back a horse called Two Lemons. When the horse won by a neck, Mr. Fleming bought Bob a bottle of whiskey to say thanks. The gift elicited another two-word tip from Bob, but he took the whiskey anyway.

Charlie never asked Bob for a tip, and it was for this reason that Bob came to Charlie's house on the rare occasions when he needed to borrow something. One evening, Bob was in urgent need of a bottle of wine. Wine was something he never thought he'd need, and he'd never have admitted to needing it if it hadn't been an emergency. Charlie was able to supply a bottle of red wine, and to show his gratitude, Bob gave him a tip. He said this horse couldn't lose.

The horse lost. Charlie was annoyed at losing his money, and Bob wasn't too happy about it either. He called to Charlie's house that evening to apologise. "I want to make it up to you," he said. "I thought about giving you another tip, but that might only make things worse. So I'm giving you a box of Christmas lights."

The box of lights was on the back of a cart pulled by a donkey, who was waiting patiently outside Charlie's house. Charlie didn't want a box of Christmas lights, but he couldn't refuse a gift. "Thank you very much," he said to Bob.

"You can have the donkey and cart as well."

Charlie didn't want a donkey and cart and he did his best to refuse this gift, but Bob said he'd be doing a favour for both of them if he took the donkey and cart with the box of lights. Charlie was going to point out that the purpose of giving a gift wasn't to do a favour for yourself. Gift-giving was really all about doing a favour for the person you're giving the gift to. But the idea of owning a donkey and cart began to grow on him, and he agreed to take them.

Owning a donkey and cart became even more appealing when he realised he could make money from them. People offered to pay him for rides on the cart. At first, Charlie only planned to offer the service on Saturdays, but demand was so great that he started doing it in the evenings as well. A middle-aged woman called Bessie used to go for rides on the cart nearly every day. She'd spend about an hour on the cart, and she didn't mind where the donkey took her. Charlie didn't mind spending so much time with her because he enjoyed her company. They'd talk about anything from art to politics to centipedes.

George was another one of his regular customers. Ever since he retired, he had plenty time to devote to wasting time on the back of a cart. He used to be a pilot. He often spoke about things that happened 'in the war', but he never said what war it was. It involved Germans, geese and a mysterious superior who claimed to be receiving information from aliens.

One day when Bessie was on the cart, Charlie mentioned in passing that George was another regular passenger. She seemed concerned. She wanted to know where he asked to be taken to and what he spoke about during their trips. Charlie told her that he never had any particular destination in mind, and on their most recent trip he spent most of the time talking about how an alien would get his own foot into his mouth to remove all the juices from it.

He was out with Bessie again a few days later when they went down a narrow lane and they were soon engulfed by a thick fog. Charlie couldn't see anything ahead, but the donkey kept going forwards. Charlie sensed that something was wrong. After travelling for nearly a quarter of an hour they still hadn't encountered any obstacles on the lane. Charlie had never been on a lane as long and straight as this before. Bessie seemed excited, but she didn't say a word. She didn't respond to anything Charlie said to her.

The donkey finally stopped at a round red-brick tower. It was a small tower, just two-storeys high with a steeple on top. Bessie's face was full of wonder, and Charlie could detect that same sense of wonder in her voice when she said, "I knew the donkey would find it eventually. And I knew he'd have to get lost before he found it. Knowing where I was going never helped me find it. It's been twenty years since I've last been here. The fog knew what I was looking for. It came to help the donkey get lost and bring me here."

She got down from the cart and she went to the door at front of the tower. She rang the bell, and a man opened the door shortly afterwards. They seemed overjoyed to see each other. After they'd embraced he said, "I knew you'd find your way back. And you've come by donkey, I see. I had a feeling that would happen. I thought it was going to be either a donkey or a hovercraft. I'm glad it was the donkey."

This man's name was Vincent. He wrote novels about the lives and loves of woodland animals, and he illustrated these books himself. Bessie used to visit him every day when she was in her early twenties. The tower was much easier to find back then, but it could still hide itself when it wanted to. Bessie spent a summer working in France, and when she came back she couldn't find the tower. Vincent had fallen behind with his rent, and the tower was doing its best to hide from George. Vincent rarely went far away from his home because he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to find it when he came back.

Now that Bessie had found the tower again she promised to visit Vincent every day, but she was afraid that George would follow her there. Charlie came up with a plan to make George give up hope of getting the rent. He suggested building the ruins of a round tower. They could make it look as if it had been destroyed in a storm and abandoned many years ago. The donkey would then lead George to these ruins. If they could convince him that the ruins used to be his tower, he'd assume that Vincent was long gone, and that he'd never get his money.

Charlie and his friends built these ruins using red bricks from a wall that uncle Harry accidentally knocked down when he was trying to move the small mechanical digger he'd hired to dig the foundations for another red brick wall. This ruined tower was located near a stream, and it was hidden by trees. Vincent helped as well, but he didn't want to leave the real tower for long in case he couldn't find it again.

It took a few weeks to get the tower to look as if it had been defeated by a storm. After they'd finished work on the ruins, Charlie was taking George on a cross-country trip one day when he said, "This is very strange. I can't get the donkey to stop. This has never happened before. I've often had trouble getting him going, but never stopping."

"Just let him go wherever he wants to go," George said.

Charlie was hoping that the donkey wouldn't stop and refuse to go any further before they reached their destination. Thankfully, they made it all the way to the ruined tower without any breaks.

George was furious when he saw the ruins. He was determined to seek damages from whoever had destroyed the building, but Charlie managed to convince him that the culprit was almost certainly Mother Nature. It was much more difficult to convince him that he couldn't secure damages from mother Nature, though he did promise to leave as big a carbon footprint as he possibly could.

Over the following weeks, Charlie took Bessie to the tower every day. She'd normally go for a walk with Vincent while Charlie stayed at the tower, drinking tea and reading some of Vincent's books. They always found this secretive building by going to the same narrow lane. They'd be engulfed by fog, and they'd let the donkey lead them all the way to the tower. But one evening he stopped at another obstacle. It was a hovercraft, and they found the tower just beyond it. Vincent was already at the front door. He was talking to George, who looked very pleased with himself.

"My nephew finally got his hovercraft working," he said. "I thought it had come too late for me to find my tower, but I agreed to take it out for a ride, seeing as he'd put so much work into stopping the engine from exploding and the propeller from flying away. I was enjoying the ride until I was engulfed by fog, and I lost control of the craft. I tried hard to make the engine explode, but for once it remained stubbornly resistant to an explosion. It finally came to a stop here. Imagine my surprise when I found my tower and it was fully intact. It hadn't been interfered with by Mother Nature at all. Imagine my delight when I found that it was still occupied by the man who owes me over thirty-thousand euros in rent."

"I keep telling you," Vincent said. "There's no way I can possibly pay you that sort of money."

"You're going to have to think of something," George said. "Make me an offer. I suggest that all three of ye start thinking, because I have a suspicion that all three of ye played a part in making me believe that my tower had been destroyed."

"Instead of the money," Charlie said, "you could walk with the donkey whenever you wanted to."

George responded to this by shaking his head and saying, "I specifically stated that you should think. Start thinking and then make me an offer. A meagre amount of thought will show you how utterly ridiculous your offer is."

"It's a fantastic offer," Charlie said. "This donkey was trained by Bob. You already have proof that this is an exceptional creature -- he's able to lead us to the tower, and his engine has never come close to exploding. Sometimes when I'm walking next to him, strange combinations of words will enter my head. I've only recently discovered that these are the names of horses. I think he's telepathically passing on tips. I'm not a betting man myself, so I've no use for them, but they could be a nice little money-earner for someone with an interest in gambling."

George was a betting man. He couldn't resist the prospect of even marginally improving his chances of backing a winner, so he accepted Charlie's offer. On the following evening he started walking with the donkey while passengers sat on the cart. Charlie was getting all of the money paid by the passengers. If George's chances of backing a winner improved at all, it was only a very marginal improvement, but even this was enough to keep him happy. It was pleasing to know that he had access to information denied to his friends in the pub, while those poor fools were still relying on being verbally abused by Bob.

The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying listening to the wife's aunt talk about sounds you can eat and snowflakes that blossom into hedgehogs as they fall and all the other things that occupied her mind while the World Cup was on. She only spoke about toast for the duration of the tournament to protest about all the sport on television (this was her version of a hunger strike). We missed her dissertations when she started to run out of things to say about toast, but she's hardly stopped talking since Spain lifted the trophy. She records what she says in her sleep. On Sunday she spoke for hours about the debate concerning whether or not it would be a breach of etiquette to inform someone that they're about to be struck by lightning.

The Tide of Luck will Turn

It seems as if we're acting as Europe's umbrella. We're absorbing all the wind and rain from the Atlantic while they get the heat wave. We could pretend we're doing it on purpose, and charge them for the service. The wife's aunt says that when she was young she had a nanny who held an umbrella over her on sunny days and let her get wet on rainy days, but the nanny was paid in paper clips and porridge.

My cousin Isobel wanted to make a cup of tea one Saturday morning but the kettle wouldn't work. It had been a bad start to the day. As well as the broken kettle, there was a funny noise coming from the cat. But she thought of a way to solve both of these problems: go to a place where she could get a decent cup of tea and where she couldn't hear the cat.

She went to a small cafe she'd never been to before, and she was very surprised when she recognised the waitress, whose name was Flora. They had been in school together. They hadn't met since leaving school, but Isobel would have assumed that Flora had gone on to achieve great things. She was very intelligent and she was full of vigour. Even when she was still in school she set up a business importing ice cream. Isobel was surprised to find Flora working as a waitress, but she didn't think she could tactfully express her surprise.

She didn't have to tip-toe around the subject for long. Flora said, "I suppose you're surprised to find me working as a waitress."

"As a matter of fact I am," Isobel said. "I always thought you'd have your own empire by now."

"I never came close to having an empire, but I thought I was on the right path to it, until I was plagued by bad luck. I must have been unwittingly crossing the paths of black cats and walking under ladders. I lost a lot of money on shares in a company that made high-quality kitchen utensils. The woman who ran the company had a very wholesome image, but that was ruined when a newspaper printed photos of her hunting ponies. Sales collapsed, and the company went bust. And just a few weeks after that my furniture shop went under. A much bigger furniture shop moved in next door and I couldn't compete with them. I had to sell my recruitment company to pay my debts. I had a restaurant as well, but that started to go downhill after a bad review in a magazine. It was just my luck that the food critic ate there only hours after the chef had been dumped by his fiancee because he kept getting her name wrong. She wanted him back on the following day. She even offered to change her name, but the damage to my restaurant had already been done. I shut it down a few months later. So despite all of my grand plans, here I am, working as a waitress. And my brother Will is making a fortune, even though the grandest plan he ever had was to pick up a piece of sponge cake he saw on the floor. He never did any work in school. The only thing he did with enthusiasm was lying down. After years of wasting his life he started making bikes that make music as they move. The type of music depends on the speed you cycle at. He loves cycling around the countryside at a leisurely waltz. It's dangerous to accelerate up to rock music on some of those narrow country roads. His business is booming, and he offered to lend me money to fund my next venture, but I just can't swallow my pride and take money from him. So here I am working as a waitress."

"Do you have another business venture in mind?"

"Without any money, I have to start from the very bottom, but it's not a bad place to start. The castle near the cliffs has been renovated. You can go on a guided tour of the castle and its grounds. The official opening is tomorrow, and I'll be there, selling souvenirs from a stall. As soon as I finish my shift here I'll be going home to assemble as many of these souvenirs as I can before tomorrow. I'll be up half the night putting pins on badges and stickers on small plastic castles."

Isobel thought that Flora's downfall put her problems with the kettle and the noisy cat into perspective. She offered to help assemble the souvenirs, and Flora said she'd gladly take all the help she could get, as long as it didn't come from her brother.

Isobel spent the afternoon working on the merchandise for Flora's stall. As well as the badges and the plastic castles, she had postcards, candles, mugs, glasses, figurines of leprechauns, T-shirts and CDs of Irish music.

When Isobel got home that evening, the kettle was working, but it was making a funny noise. The cat was purring without making his noise. The fact that he wasn't working was no reason to be concerned. Even if you could plug him in, he wouldn't do anything. Not making funny noises is as much as you can reasonably expect him to do. Isobel hoped that these were good omens for the following day.

When she woke up in the morning she heard the sound of a strong wind outside. She went to the castle at the cliffs to help Flora set up her stall, but the wind was doing its best to blow the merchandise away. And then a strong gust came along and blew the whole stall away.

The minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism was due to cut the ribbon at the official opening of the castle. He had just stepped out of his car when Flora's stall landed on the roof of it. There were plenty of photographers there to capture his stunned expression.

If anyone had been interested in Flora they would have seen the look of horror frozen on her face. She knew she'd have to pay for the damage done to the car, even though she didn't have the money, and this was further confirmation that her luck would prevent her from ever achieving anything with her life.

Her brother, Will, decided to intervene. He was there to promote his bikes. He went over to the minister, and he brought a bike with him. He said, "I'd like to present you with one of my bikes. This is my own bike, the very first one I made, so it's more valuable than all of the others. I'm sure this will more than cover the damage done to the car."

The minister felt he had to smile and agree to this deal because there were so many voters and journalists around. Flora was glad that her brother had intervened. She thought that the lesson to be learnt from this was that she could achieve something with her life, but only if she accepted the help of others.

The photographers asked the minister to try out the bike, and he agreed because he thought it would look good in the papers. He had a reputation for being dismissive of environmentalists. Being seen cycling was just the thing his reputation needed.

He set off at a leisurely pace, a gentle waltz, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. There was a broad smile on his face when he turned around and cycled back towards the cliffs. He picked up speed, and with a gust of wind behind him he went even faster. He knew something was wrong when he heard the rock music he hated, and then the metal his teenage son listened to. He couldn't stop. The sound of death metal drowned out the sound of the wind as the minister went over the edge of the cliff.

Looks of horror were frozen on the faces of most of the people there, though there were a few smiles. Flora was blaming her own bad luck for the accident, but the minister miraculously avoided death. He landed on an enormous inflatable trout on the back of a boat. The owner of a local fish shop was using it as free advertising on the day of the castle's opening.

Flora made a made a lot of money that day because everyone wanted to buy souvenirs of the event. Some people believed that the souvenirs were blessed.

"I think your luck has changed," Isobel said to her.

"Yeah. I feel as if I'm back on track. I'm not going to aim for the empire this time around, but I'd certainly like another chance at running a restaurant."

Over the following weeks, thousands of people came to the castle to buy souvenirs. Flora had her restaurant opened within six months. Isobel got a very good discount every time she ate there, and she often ate there to solve problems she was having with domestic appliances or to ignore the behaviour of the cat. As well as making funny noises, he started showing off his funny walks.

The moose's head over the fireplace was disappointed with the World Cup. He was hoping that the tournament would be redeemed by the final, but after twenty minutes he was staring at the latest painting on the wall rather than looking at the television. The painting depicts a goalkeeper during a football match. He's been hypnotised into believing that he's a wall, and that no ball can get past him. But he's holding a nail and the nail is supporting a painting of a vase full of flowers, so he isn't very effective as a wall or as a goalkeeper.

The Caravan Park

I spent most of the weekend appreciating leaves in the garden. I never realised how fascinating they are. Their shadows and their movement in the strong wind enhanced my appreciation of them. My mind was operating at the right speed for looking at leaves. When my mind slows down it can be dangerous to attempt a task that's more complex than sitting on a deckchair while looking at the shadows of leaves dance on a concrete path. When I tried to make beans on toast I nearly burnt down the kitchen, and that was before I'd even opened the tin of beans.

My uncle Ben has a mind that's ideally equipped for sitting on a deckchair in the sun and falling asleep. Having successfully accomplished this task one day he woke to find a snail on his hand. Ben was always hitting his hand off things, but the snail could have had no idea of how dangerous it was to park his caravan in this place. Sometimes he had to hit something with his hand to get it working again, like the television or the fridge, but most of the time he hit his hand accidentally. He had to make sure that this didn't happen until after the snail had moved on. After his guest had set out for another destination, Ben would be free to hit his hand off whatever he wanted, and he had a growing list of things that he wanted to hit. There were plenty of things around the house that needed to be fixed, and a few things that needed to be broken.

He had to eat his dinner with a spoon that evening because the snail hadn't moved on, and he could only use his left hand while the right one was being used as a caravan park. The other people in the restaurant were wondering if he was going to eat the snail. His wife, Greta, insisted that he get rid of his diminutive guest before he went to bed that night, so he carefully pushed the snail onto a cushion.

When he woke in the morning he went downstairs to look at the cushion, but the snail had gone. He could see a trail across the sofa and down onto the floor, so he followed that. The snail had travelled a long way during the night. Its trail went all the way down the hall and under the stairs. Ben had to get a flashlight to follow the rest of the trail.

He found the snail parked next to a small black button near the ground. Ben had never seen this button before, and he had no idea what it was for. He was afraid to push it because it was probably put there by his father-in-law, who built the house. Jack, his father-in-law, was an intimidating man. Even when he was lying in his coffin, his gaze was just as frightening as ever. The coffin made him seem even more frightening. He used to take a rest in it every afternoon.

Ben was very tempted to push the button because he was curious about what would happen, but he knew that the safest thing to do would be to ignore it. He put the snail back on his hand to help him refrain from giving into temptation.

After a few days, Greta was sick of seeing the snail at the other side of the dinner table, so she pushed the button herself. It opened a door that had been hidden in the wall under the stairs, and this led them to a tiny kitchen. Neither of them had ever seen this room before. There was a notebook on a shelf. It was full of recipes for cakes, and Greta was shocked when she recognised the hand-writing. The secret baker was her father.

Ben found it very difficult to picture Jack working in a kitchen, unless he was doing something with a meat cleaver. But you couldn't bake a cake by repeatedly hacking at something with a meat cleaver. A more subtle approach was required, an approach that was completely at odds with Jack's normal way of doing things. He managed to keep the baking a secret all of his life and he maintained his reputation.

Ben looked through the recipe book, and some of the cakes seemed delicious. He found it very difficult to resist the temptation to bake them. He tried putting the snail on his hand to stop himself from becoming a secret baker like Jack, but the snail proved to be an obstacle that was easy to surmount. Ben started baking in secret late at night. He used Jack's recipes, and he was amazed at how well the cakes turned out. He'd discovered something he was good at, after a lifetime of being good at discovering things he was bad at.

It wasn't long before his secret was out. Greta woke up one night and she found him eating cake in bed. He came clean about his secret hobby. He wasn't bothered by her laughter, but he was surprised by the praise she lavished on his cakes. She was normally very critical of other people's cooking and baking. He was annoyed when she told all of her friends and the neighbours about his new hobby, but he soon got used to the jokes about baking his watch in a cake or poisoning half the village.

Greta was a member of the local community council, and they had organised a jumble sale to raise money for repairs to the roof of the community hall. Ben agreed to make a few cakes for the sale. He wanted his cakes to be as fresh as possible, so he made them on the day of the sale. It was a rush to get the icing finished. Greta kept reminding him of the time because she was supposed to take the cakes to the sale and she wanted to get there early to help set up some of the stalls.

Despite the rush, he was pleased with his creations. Greta put the three cakes in the back of the car and drove away. After she had gone, Ben looked at his watch, but something seemed missing. He remembered that he had put the snail on his hand that morning, but his new friend had gone. A horrible thought dawned on Ben: the snail had ended up in one of the cakes.

He spent a few minutes mourning the loss of his friend, and then he remembered that someone would eat the cake containing the deceased snail unless he stopped them. Greta had taken the car, so he had to cycle to the jumble sale. By the time he reached the community hall the cakes had been sold, but the woman at the cake stall was able to tell him who had bought his creations.

Mrs. Moriarty had bought his Madeira cake. When he offered to buy it back for three times what she had paid for it, she was suspicious. He wouldn't tell her why he wanted it back, but he made it perfectly clear how much he wanted it back. Negotiating a good deal is another one of those things Ben is bad at. He ended up paying twenty times what she had paid for it. He paid exorbitant prices for the other two cakes as well, but he didn't care because he was so relieved to get the cakes back. People had made jokes about him baking snails. It wouldn't have been funny if that turned out to be true.

When he got home he cut open the cakes to search for the dead snail. He spent a pleasant afternoon eating the snail-free slices as he conducted his search. That search proved fruitless, even his search of the fruitcake. He wondered what could have happened to his tiny friend. Greta arrived home as he settled down to an evening of detective work, the sort of work he normally conducts on a deckchair with his eyes closed. She asked him why he put the snail on his shoulder, and that was the end of his detective work. He remembered that he had put the snail on his shoulder to avoid inadvertently baking it. He was kicking himself for paying so much money to get his cakes back. But it was probably just as well that he bought them back because he found a screw, a key ring and his wedding ring in them.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys looking at the shadows of the trees outside the window in the evening. According to the wife's aunt, if you stare at the shadow of a tree for long enough you'll form a bond with its soul, and in your dreams you'll be able to see everything the tree has witnessed during its life. This is how she saw her father set fire to a shed when he was five. The shed contained bottles of his grandfather's homemade wine, and only his grandfather thought the arsonist deserved punishment rather than praise. She wouldn't say any more than this about the incident because she remembered her vow to only talk about toast until the end of the World Cup.