Changes

I've decided to update this site once every three weeks instead of once every week. The moose's head over the fireplace thinks it's probably for the best, but he's agreed with everything I've said since Sunday. Watching Cork reach the All-Ireland football final has left him in a permanent good mood. Beating Dublin to get there was an added bonus. And on top of all that, we let the Dubs think they'd win for almost all of the game, only to steal it at the end.

All in the heart

I could spend all evening looking out the window at the garden in a breeze. It's important to guard the window as well, to stop, Clancy, one of our neighbours from getting in. He wears a top hat, and his pet mice live in it. They have a door in the hat, but they always go in and out through the window. He tried to train them to use the door, but he failed, so he pretended that he wanted them to use the window, that going in and out of a house through a window was the civilised thing to do. This is why he gave up using doors himself, and he's managed to convince other people that breaking into houses through windows is a sign of sophistication. Some people didn't need much convincing.

My uncle Ben once made cider using the apples from the trees in his garden. It was around about this time that he started seeing strange lights at night in the fields around his house. The people who had refused to drink his cider (which was everyone he offered it to) said that this was just a hallucination due to the effects of the cider, and they didn't hesitate in saying 'I told you so', even though they'd told him nothing of the sort.

Ben started to wonder if they were right. Perhaps he was going mad. He kept thinking about this, and he knew that if he wasn't mad, the fear that he was going mad would certainly drive him there. He needed to find out if the lights were all in his head, so he set out to investigate late one night.

He was relieved to find that the lights were real. They were the flashlights of people who were following an old man as he walked through the fields. He had a bag over his shoulder and a letter in his hand. He seemed to be in a trance. One of the people following him told Ben that this man, whose name was Patrick, was a retired postman, and every night he went sleepwalking to deliver a letter. The letters were always addressed to a woman called Maggie. The address was different each night. It could be a town anywhere in the country, but Patrick always delivered them to a place in the locality. He'd put one in a tree or give one to a cow or leave one by a stream.

Ben became worried again. He suspected he was hallucinating. His mind became preoccuppied with thoughts of madness, and he didn't pay any attention to where he was going. When he tripped over a rock he used a swear word that was loud enough to seep into the dreams of people sleeping in houses a mile away. Patrick woke up. He was terrifed at first, but he soon realised what was going on. It wasn't the first time he had woken up in a field with a letter in his hand.

His followers wanted to know why he delivered letters in his sleep. He said there was a very good reason for it, a story to explain his strange behaviour, but it was the sort of story that could only be told in the right atmosphere. Ben said he knew how to create this atmosphere at short notice, and he went home to get some cider. The postman agreed to tell the story as long as he didn't have to drink any of it.

When he was in his twenties he was always doing stunts on his motorbike to impress his friends. He was at a garden party one evening when he tried to jump over an elephant. This was a pink elephant which was often seen by a man called Trevor, who had long conversations with the elephant who followed him around. Patrick made it over the elephant, but he crashed into a tree, which he thought was just a figment of his imagination. When he regained consciousness he was being tended to by a nurse called Maggie. He thought she was an angel, and she didn't go down in his estimation when he realised that she was human and he was still alive. He stayed with her until exhaustion recalled him to unconsciousness on the following afternoon. It was a magical time, and he wasn't sad when it came to an end because he thought he'd be spending the rest of his life with her. She wrote her address on a piece of paper, but when he woke up he couldn't find it. He didn't even know her surname. He tried hard to remember her name and address. He sent letters to Maggies all over the country, but he never found her. No one at the party knew who she was. Some people told him she was probably just an invention of his mind. Alcohol and concussion wasn't a good combination, they said. But he was convinced that she was real, and he kept trying to find her. Even after forty years, the longing to see her again was so strong that his subconscious mind was still trying to remember her address as he slept.

His story was so heart-breaking that he agreed to try some of Ben's cider, and so did all of his followers. It certainly helped lighten the mood. Within an hour, he was attempting another jump on his motorbike. This time he'd try to go over a red donkey, which wasn't real. Neither was the motorbike, but Patrick still knocked himself unconscious when he ran into a tree.

When he regained consciousness he saw Ben kneeling over him, and he was convinced that Ben was Maggie. Ben played along because he thought it would be cruel to deprive him of a meeting with the love of his life, even if it was just an illusory one. He kept up the act until the ambulance arrived and took Patrick to hospital.

Ben went to see Patrick in the hospital on the following day. Patrick felt at peace after seeing Maggie again, and he was glad he hadn't asked for her address. "She hasn't aged well at all," he said. "It's for the best that I'll never see her again. I'm glad I only saw her face at night this time around. Even then I could tell by the look in her eyes that she's not the brightest of bulbs. And the smell!"

Ben felt a need to defend himself, but he said nothing. Everything had worked out for the best, he thought.

Patrick was released from hospital later that day. That night, Ben was woken by the sound of the letterbox opening. When he looked out the window he saw Patrick sleepwalking away down the garden path. He had just delivered a love letter to Maggie. Ben decided he'd be better off avoiding Patrick, and ignoring any noises he heard in the middle of the night.

The moose's head over the fireplace has looked annoyed since Sunday afternoon when the wife's niece performed some of her songs for us. For someone so young, she's amassed a surprisingly large number of songs about getting lost in the wild and having to kill animals with a pair of binoculars.

The Emerald

The dog keeps barking at the glasshouse. He spent years ignoring it, and now that he's suddenly acknowledged its existence he keeps barking at it. The wife's aunt claims that it's haunted by the ghost of a woman called Mrs. Cavanagh who's just been reunited with the ghost of her cat, after nearly a century apart. The cat spent the past hundred years travelling all around the world. If travel broadens the mind, then my mind must be far narrower than that of this dead cat, but I'm used to unfavourable comparisons with dead animals.

My cousin June's kids, Daisy and Graham, used to feed a scarecrow every day. They never saw him eating, but the food would always be gone when they came back to get the empty plate or bowl. During their summer holidays from school, they'd leave the pasta or rice pudding or garlic bread with him at about ten o' clock in the morning and they'd come back an hour later. They believed that he was looking much healthier after they started feeding him. He was putting on weight, and he looked happier. Some people told them that he wasn't eating the food at all. Their cousin, Mike, believed that crows were eating all the food, and that they were really tormenting the scarecrow because he couldn't eat it, and instead he had to watch his greatest foe, the crow, eating the food right in front of him. Not only did he have to put up with the torment of seeing the crows enjoying a meal intended for him, he also had to accept his failure in the one thing he should be good at: scaring crows away. Other people believed that someone was using the scarecrow as bait to catch a meal, that this person would emerge from a hiding place and eat the food after it had been left there. But Daisy and Graham rejected all these theories. They were convinced that the scarecrow was eating the food and that he was their friend.

They thought they had proof of this when they arrived in the field one morning with a bowl of Cornflakes and they found that the scarecrow had a gift for them. In one hand he held a silver ring with an emerald, and in the other hand he held a note. The note explained that the ring was his way of thanking them for the food. He was aware that they might not have much use for a ring, but it would bring them good luck, as long as they used it in the right way.

They thanked the scarecrow for the present, and they promised to bring him a slice of chocolate cake on the following day. As they walked home they wondered what they'd do with the ring. "What does he mean by 'the right way'?" Graham said.

"He means we must do something good."

"What if he's an evil scarecrow? He'd want us to do something bad then."

"Do you really want to be a partner in crime with an evil scarecrow?"

Graham considered this. He could see many benefits to being in league with an evil scarecrow, but there would be a downside as well, and his mother would never let him out to play with anything inherently evil. Reluctantly, he said, "No. I suppose not."

"If he's evil then it's even more important that we do good. We have to show him that we want nothing to do with his plans. But I think he's good."

"I think so too. He ate the porridge we gave him. I can't imagine bad people eating porridge. So what could we do that would be good?"

"We'll have to give the ring to someone who could use it. And not someone who's just going to wear it and think 'hooray, I'm wearing an emerald'. Some good will have to come out of it."

They decided to give the ring to a neighbour of theirs, a man called Dennis. He was in his early sixties. For the previous ten years he'd been in love with a woman called Imelda. Every Friday night they went ballroom dancing. They went for walks together, and they'd go for drives to the coast. She was obviously in love with him as well, but he was having trouble asking her to marry him. There had been a few near-misses, like the time he got down on one knee to propose and his knee crushed a slice of Black Forrest Gateau. It never crossed her mind that he had been in the process of proposing to her. She assumed that he got down on one knee to crush a slice of Black Forrest Gateau. She thought it was an odd way of dealing with a dessert, but she didn't like Black Forrest Gateau, so if he'd gone ahead with the proposal, his seemingly strange behaviour wouldn't have stopped her from saying yes. Dennis decided that the best course of action was to abandon the proposal. He stood up and started picking bits of Black Forrest Gateau from his trousers.

A few months later he was ready to propose on a walk by the sea. He had prepared a speech about how he'd known her for a long time and how attached he'd become to her and so forth, but he'd only said the words 'I've known' when the front page of a newspaper blew onto his face and stayed there. The headline was about a celebrity who'd been cheating on his wife. Dennis knew this because Imelda read it out loud while the paper was stuck to his face. When she'd finished reading this story of adultery he didn't think it would be appropriate to fill the silence with the words 'Will you marry me?'.

Daisy and Graham thought that the scarecrow was hinting at how the ring should be used, because 'emerald' sounds like 'Imelda'. They wanted Dennis to use the ring to propose to her, and to convince him to do it, they forged a note from the scarecrow. It said that the ring was guaranteed to make Imelda say yes if he used it to propose.

They gave him the ring and the note and they told him about the scarecrow. They were expecting him to go straight to Imelda's house and then come back to invite them to the engagement party on the following evening. They were going to make muffins for the party. But he seemed reluctant to use the ring. "I'm struggling to believe all this," he said. "For one thing, scarecrows can't write."

"No," Graham said. "It really is all true. I mean really. I mean, the note is a total forgery. But it really is all true."

"It's nice of ye to show such concern for my love life, but I think I'm going to wait for a better opportunity to propose. Maybe at Christmas. And if that doesn't work, there's always Christmas next year."

Daisy and Graham started thinking about an alternative use for the ring, but Dennis had a change of heart after a dream that night. The scarecrow appeared to him in this dream and showed him a vision of a future in which Imelda married a man called Roger. It was a nightmare for Dennis. Roger had been making jokes about Dennis's bike for fifty-five years. Dennis hadn't said anything to Roger in thirty-seven years. He gave up speaking to his former classmate in the hope that this would put an end to the jokes, but it didn't. Every time they met, Roger belittled the bike Dennis had when he was a child.

Some people told Dennis that the dream was entirely a product of his own subconscious, and that it might well have been influenced by something he ate. His brother asked him if he'd put his knee into his dinner before eating it, and had he put his knee into something foul before putting it into his dinner. But Dennis was convinced that this was no ordinary dream. He was determined to propose to Imelda this time, and he was confident of success because the scarecrow had reassured him that she'd say yes.

She accepted his proposal. She probably would have said yes if he'd given her a Black Forrest Gateau instead of a ring (though she would have had reservations), but she was overwhelmed by the emerald. She thought it was a good omen for their marriage. "It's just like the emerald ring my grandmother had," she said. "And my grandmother was married for over seventy years. Of course, my grandmother's sister was married for over a hundred-and-seventy years, but that's the combined lengths of her marriages to five different men. She led a very busy life. My grandmother took pride in only having one husband at a time, and in having him all the time."

Daisy and Graham were invited to the wedding, along with their parents. June bought Waterford crystal glasses as a wedding present for the happy couple. Daisy and Graham were given a present by Dennis and Imelda, to say thanks for their role in bringing about the wedding. They got new bikes.

"We wouldn't have got the bikes if we'd done something bad," Daisy said to her brother.

"We could have stolen bikes."

"You've got to admit, this is a much better way of getting a bike."

"I suppose so."

"We have to do something for the scarecrow, to say thanks for what he did."

They decided to give some of the wedding cake to the scarecrow. They left it on a plate in front of him. As they were walking away they heard a sound, and when they turned around the cake was gone. The scarecrow looked perfectly content with the world. The crows waiting at the edge of the field all looked depressed.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the start of the Premier League on Saturday. It should be a good way of forgetting about the hurling. I won't say any more about the hurling. All my attempts to forget about it only serve as reminders. The one thing that helped take my mind off it for a while was listening to the latest album that my wife's niece recorded on a cassette, but that was so disturbing I had to think about the hurling to take my mind off it.

Like Father, Like Daughter

I found the plans for the miniature golf course my great-grandfather built in the garden. I was able to locate some of the greens. It was a beautiful course, but it didn't last long because people were afraid of it. The balls would disappear down the holes and they'd turn up in some very strange places. One man always went home after a game having failed to retrieve any of the balls he'd played with. When he'd arrive home he'd find the balls posing as eggs in his hen house.

My cousin Darren used to work for a small company that imported carpets. He got on well with his boss, Victor, even though almost all of their conversations concerned work. On the rare occasions when they strayed into non-work-related subjects, they'd talk about sport, and the only thing Victor ever said about sport was 'They're all a bunch of wasters'. Darren knew nothing of his boss's personal situation until one Thursday afternoon when Victor called him into his office and said, "I have a favour to ask. I'd never be asking you to do this if it wasn't of immense importance. Firstly, there are a few things you need to know about me. I've been divorced for eight years. Till my dying day I'll regret my mistake, and on every day until my death I'll have to live with the consequences of what I did. I left my wife for a woman who left me for another man just two weeks after I walked out on my family. I abandoned my family and found myself in oblivion. I had this delusion of living happily ever after with Hilda, the woman I was having an affair with. Only when my delusion was shattered did I see all that I'd lost. I have a daughter called Nadine. She was fourteen when I left and she hasn't spoken to me since. Nothing in this world could cause me greater pain than being rejected by the person I love most, and I'd be surprised if anything as painful is waiting for me in the afterlife, though I can't deny I deserve it. This feels like an eternal hell because a parent's love never fades. It didn't take long for Hilda to remove all of her belongings from my heart. Guilt makes things worse. I used to be close to my daughter. I often think of the hurt I must have caused her to make her refuse to have anything to do with me for eight years. My only hope is that some day she'll forgive me, but until then I'll have to live with the pain and the regret and the guilt and the worry. I can't stop worrying about her. I need to know that she's okay. People tell me that she's okay, but I keep thinking that they're just saying that so I won't worry or that she's hiding how she's really feeling. This is why I need your help. A friend of mine gave me this."

Victor showed Darren a notice taken from a notice board. It stated that volunteers were needed to help convert the offices of a former gardening magazine into a gallery of cat art. Volunteers were requested to go to the offices at seven o' clock that evening.

"Nadine is organising this," Victor said. "I'd be eternally grateful to you if you went along this evening and observed my daughter. I'm asking you because I think you'd have the insight to be able to tell if she's really happy."

"If she's the sort of person who converts old offices into galleries devoted to art about cats then surely you don't have anything to worry about."

"A parent always has something to worry about, even a sub-standard parent like me. It's easy to look at the surface and say, 'She's doing exemplary work in the promotion of cat art and she's not on drugs -- she's thriving in life'. But what do you see when you look beneath the surface? Is she relentlessly taking on projects to fill a void in her life? Perhaps it would be better if she was on drugs and had no interest in cat art. There are rehabilitation programmes for drug addiction, but given the state of mental health services in this country, what are the chances of getting professional help to stop someone building a gallery of cat art? I think you'd be able to see beneath the surface. I wouldn't ask if this wasn't immensely important to me."

Darren didn't see how he could refuse such a request, so instead of an evening in the pub with his friends, he spent hours clearing out old offices with strangers. He tried to spend as much time as possible with Nadine. He had a long chat with her as he helped her empty filing cabinets, and he couldn't detect any signs of a void beneath the surface. He looked forward to informing her father that all was well, but another problem was emerging. Darren liked Nadine, and he wanted to help her work on the gallery again. He knew he could never build a friendship based on a lie. He had to tell her why he had volunteered to help, and if she said she never wanted to see him again, at least that would be better than trying to sustain a lie.

As he was gathering the courage to say 'There's something I have to tell you', she said, "There's something I have to tell you. I'm not really estranged from my father and he never left my mother. I'm still living at home with my parents. I was telling Dad that I needed help with the gallery and he said he'd trick you into volunteering. When he told me how he was going to do it I was completely against the idea, but I couldn't stop him. He loves his tricks. He loves acting as well. As soon as he got this idea into his head, he couldn't let go of it."

"I can't believe he'd tell a lie like that. I really thought he was living in torment. I felt sorry for him. If he'd just asked me to volunteer I'd have done it."

"I know. That's what I said to him. This is typical of his sense of humour. He's always doing things like this. But on the plus side, it makes you perfectly entitled to play a trick on him, and I can help you do it. We can respond in kind. Just give me a day or two and I'll come up with something."

On the following morning, Darren didn't think it was such a good idea to be playing a practical joke on his boss, no matter how much the man deserved it. He was going to phone Nadine to tell her to drop any plans she was working on, but she phoned him when he was on his way to work and she told him that she'd already formed a plan and had put it into action. "I left the house early this morning," she said. "I went out without making a sound and then I made as much noise as I could on the way back in so Dad would think I'd been out all night and I was just arriving back. Over breakfast he asked me where I'd been and I told him I spent the night with you."

"You what!"

"You don't need to worry. I told him you were a very gentle lover."

"I don't need to what? He's my boss and he thinks I slept with his daughter. Worrying is exactly the thing I need to be doing. That and resigning."

"It's just a joke. I'll tell him the truth this evening and he'll have a great laugh. I have this evening all worked out. I'll be very tearful when he gets home from work. I know exactly how to make him suffer even more."

"I can't spend the whole day with him when he probably wants to strangle me."

"Wanting to strangle you and actually strangling you are two very different things. Please, just play along with this for the rest of the day. I promise he'll think it's hilarious. Please."

Darren could never say no to a woman who said 'please' in italics. When he arrived at work he did his best to avoid making eye contact with his boss, but he could feel the interrogation lights of Victor's glare.

"When I asked you to get beneath the surface of my daughter," Victor said, "this wasn't what I had in mind. I want to have a word with you about what you've done. We'll talk this evening before you go home. Until then, I don't have anything else to say to you."

It was a difficult day for Darren. He would have cracked and told Victor the truth if he hadn't kept reminding himself of Nadine's insistence that her father would find it funny. Replaying the word 'please' helped as well.

When Darren finished work in the evening, Victor said, "Come with me."

They went for a drive in Victor's car. Victor didn't say a word as he drove out of the city. He waited until they were on a narrow country road before finally breaking the silence. "One thing I told you was true," he said. "I love my daughter more than anyone else on the planet. I'd do anything to protect her. Of course, a parent can't do everything to protect their kids. She's an adult now, and I can't dictate how she lives her life. For a while I thought I could do that when she was a child, but I was deluding myself. I can't stop her from being hurt, but I can give you a taste of what would happen if you hurt her."

Victor stopped outside a building that would have had bullet wounds and tattoos if it were human. They went inside, and all of the occupants of this pub looked suspiciously at the newcomers. Darren noticed that they all had bullet wounds and tattoos. He followed his boss to the bar. Victor ordered two beers, and as the drinks were being poured, Darren could hear the sound of a gun being loaded behind him. He replayed the word 'please' in his head, and this time it had no effect. The time had come to tell the truth, but he thought he'd never get a chance to say anything when someone jumped up from behind the bar and said 'boo'. For a second or two he feared for his life, but then his brain had a chance to examine these two statements: (a) Someone jumped up from behind the bar and shot him. (b) Someone jumped up from behind the bar and said 'boo'. The first statement was the one his brain had initially taken to be true, but it transpired that the second one showed a much greater correspondence to actual events, and the person who said 'boo' was the same person who'd been saying 'please' in his mind all day.

Everyone in the pub was laughing at him. They were all in on the joke. The bar man was Victor's brother. Darren was introduced to the man when Victor was finally able to stop laughing a few hours later. It took a long time for Darren to see the funny side, but an evening in the pub with his new friends helped bring out the beginnings of a laugh. He could see the benefits of making friends with his boss after spending the day convinced he'd made an enemy. Nadine kept apologising for her role in the joke, and she promised to make it up to him. Darren thought he needed to tread very carefully in case he really did make an enemy of his boss.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't pay much attention to the goldfish in the bowl on the table, but they keep staring at him. The wife's aunt owns the fish. We're looking after them while she's visiting a friend who needs help wallpapering all the rooms in her house. She's using plain white paper, and her state-of-the-nation novel will be written on this. The wife's aunt has beautiful handwriting. She could be there for weeks if she has to write all thirty-seven chapters.