Henry Seaward-Shannon

The Dog with the Pig's Head

2010-10-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

I see signs of the changing seasons everywhere I look. Brown leaves are falling from the trees. The shops are straining to unleash Christmas. This seems to have affected some of the neighbours. Christmas decorations have been put up in gardens, and they've been disguised as Halloween decorations. Santa's rosy cheeks are white, and the smiles of his elves seem sinister when pitch forks are tied to the little plastic hands. I've gone for a natural look. Dead leaves decorate our garden. I'd gladly leave them there until Christmas, but I know I'll be put under pressure to sweep them away and replace them with plastic reindeer who can fly and break windows every time the wind blows.

My cousin June's kids, Daisy and Graham, once heard that a neighbour of theirs got a new dog that had the head of a pig. They wanted to see the dog even more than they wanted vegetables to be made out of chocolate. For nearly a week they kept pestering their mother to take them to see the dog. They abandoned all of their efforts to convince her of the merits of chocolate potatoes, and they did their best to subtly steer every conversation in the direction of the dog with the pig's head.

Example:

June: Do you want some chocolate potatoes?

Graham: Do you know who'd love chocolate potatoes? The dog with the pig's head.

June was reluctant to take the kids to see the dog, partly because she knew that such a creature couldn't exist and partly because she was afraid that it did. But the kids finally wore down her resistance and she agreed to ask Fergus, their neighbour, if they could see his new dog.

Fergus showed them the dog. On any other occasion, Daisy and Graham would have been as happy as a Labrador puppy if they saw a Labrador puppy, but they were disappointed because this one had the head and body of a Labrador puppy. When people said that he had the head of a pig they meant that he'd stolen a pig's head from a butcher's shop (a head that had once been attached to the body of a pig) and he wouldn't let anyone take it off him. The head was nearly as big as him, but he was getting bigger and the head was getting smaller.

"The puppy's name is Freddie," Fergus said. "I called him that after my sister's dog. I couldn't think of anything else. My sister's dog is called after my nephew, who's also called Freddie. It's critically important to point out that my Freddie is called after my sister's dog and not her son. Her son called me a weasel."

"Haven't you tried taking the pig's head off him at night?" June said.

"Every night I spend hours trying to get it off him. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway because of the smell. Freddie doesn't seem to mind the smell at all. He only wakes up when I get anywhere near the pig's head."

"We could help you get it off him," Daisy said.

"We could definitely get it off him," Graham said. "He doesn't stand a chance against us."

The kids were full of enthusiasm for their latest scheme. They needed something to replace their well orchestrated campaign of pestering their mother, and there didn't seem to be any likelihood of pestering her into making chocolate potatoes. Their first plan was for Daisy to distract the puppy with socks while Graham took the pig's head. Graham had to undertake this part of the plan because Daisy refused to go anywhere near the pig's head (though she'd gladly have picked it up if it had been a choice between that and Graham's socks). Their plan failed because Freddie valued a rotting pig's head more than socks, and the kids knew that this creature might have a perfectly normal puppy head on the outside, but something very strange was going on inside.

They needed help, so they went to see Gareth. Every Halloween, Gareth came up with an elaborate costume for a competition in the park. He always won, even though no one was frightened by the costume. Animals were terrified of him. Many animals were scared of him when he wasn't wearing the costume (and they were right to be scared -- unwary animals have ended up being incorporated into his costumes). Halloween was just a few days away and the kids asked him to use his latest costume to frighten Freddie. They expected the puppy to drop the pig's head so he could get away as quickly as possible, but Freddie just wagged his tail when he saw the costume, much to the annoyance of Gareth.

Gareth was furious when he came back to Fergus's house that evening. He said he'd gone out to his shed to do some more work on his costume after dinner and he found Freddie asleep inside one of the costume's five legs. The pig's head was in there as well, and there didn't seem to be much chance of getting either of them out. Freddie growled and snarled every time Gareth put his hand inside the leg. And there was no way the smell was leaving any time within the next year. The puppy and the situation were getting a bit too strange for Daisy and Graham. They decided to devote their attention to a new scheme, which involved Black Forrest Gateau Brussels sprouts.

They didn't see Gareth again until the costume competition in the park on Halloween. This year everyone was terrified when he arrived. A spine-chilling sound emerged from the neck of this headless creature, and even if you couldn't hear the sound you'd have been unnerved by the manic movement of the many arms and legs. The crowd fled in terror when this beast fell over and a rotting pig's head rolled out of the neck. Only the local butcher stayed behind. He was delighted to get his pig's head back. Freddie was heart-broken when he emerged from the neck and saw that his pig's head was gone. His howls made the crowd run faster.

But they soon realised there was nothing to be scared of. Freddie's howls became barks of delight when someone gave him another pig's head. Gareth's howls from inside the costume just made people smile.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been trying on his costume for our Halloween party. He'll be a pirate with the skeleton of a parrot on one of his antlers. The wife's aunt will be going as a lamp again. She wears a hat shaped like a shade. She smiles brightly at people and sings songs of love and happiness, making sure that nothing but light emanates from her head. It's truly terrifying.

Tea and Biscuits

2010-09-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

Autumn has begun. The leaves are falling off the trees and the weather is getting colder. We can look forward to months of short days, open fires and tales of my aunt's adventures with jigsaw puzzles. She often spends winter evenings working on jigsaws, but most of the fun comes from her attempts to track down the missing pieces. She'll give us daily accounts of her investigations. Last year one of her searches went on for months, and we all developed an emotional attachment to the missing piece, which was part of a ladder. For a long time she believed that she had to find a yellow sock before she could find the piece, but with the help of a Tibetan monk she came to realise that the yellow sock was a metaphor for something else. Only she could discover what it was a metaphor for. She found the missing piece before she found the meaning of the sock. It was underneath a teapot.

My aunt Bridget and uncle Harry live near a couple called Julia and Liam, who often call around for tea and biscuits. Harry tries to avoid them, but Bridget encourages their visits. She used to spend hours just listening to them talking. Liam would tell her about all the things he'd achieved since their last visit. These achievements could be as small as getting the lid off a tin of shoe polish or teaching his dog how to spit, but there would always be plenty of twists and turns in his stories about how he arrived at his goal. He'd only stop talking to eat a biscuit. Sometimes he'd have a biscuit in his hand for half an hour as he finished a sentence. When his sentence finally came to an end with the full stop of a chocolate Digestive or a Hob Nob, his wife would take over. Julia always began by saying 'He's an awful eejit', and then she'd go on to contradict almost everything Liam had just said or to list out all the mishaps he'd suffered while working towards his goals. Opening a tin of shoe polish can be a perilous enterprise if you forget you're holding a lighting candle in one hand. Liam wouldn't hear any of this because he'd be too busy appreciating the biscuit. He could easily get twenty minutes appreciation out of a single chocolate biscuit.

Bridget preferred listening to Julia, so she started making biscuits with lots of different ingredients to keep Liam occupied for longer. He could spend an hour trying to identify a biscuit's constituents while Julia spoke about all the things that get stuck to his back during the course of a day. But on one occasion Bridget put too many ingredients in a batch of biscuits, and he spent hours trying to identify all the different spices. Julia started running out of things to say. She seemed terrified by the prospect of silence, and she frantically tried to think of something to talk about. She told old stories about the time Liam wrote a play that culminated in a wrestling match between Jeckyll and Hyde, or the time he failed to get his fountain working because he couldn't get robins to understand the concepts of traffic lights and of stop signs. When the silence eventually arrived it only lasted a few seconds before she said, "I'm having an affair with the burglar who breaks into our house every night."

Liam was too busy with the biscuit to notice what she had said. The silence that followed Julia's admission was very uncomfortable for Bridget, so she started talking about the time Harry knocked himself unconscious while trying to open a tin of paint. But she ran out of things to say as well. Liam was still immersed in his study of the biscuit, so she asked Julia about the burglar.

"When he first broke in I told him not to do it again," Julia said. "But I said it half-heartedly. He has a charm that I find impossible to resist, and he must have noticed my lack of conviction because he broke in again on the following night. Liam didn't hear a thing because he was dreaming about tasting biscuits. You can tell by the way his mouth moves as he sleeps. You wouldn't believe how annoying the sound of his mouth moving can be at night. I know plenty of women who'd say they love the sound of their husband's mouth moving without any words coming out, but I find it much easier to sleep when he's talking. I told myself I was fully justified in having an affair to pass the time while he keeps me awake. Now I see that I was fooling myself, but I still can't resist Lawrence. He says his name is Lawrence, though I can't imagine a thief giving his real name. Even when I can't see his face I find it impossible to resist him. Sometimes he wears a balaclava. I'm fairly sure it's the same man each night."

"You must put an end to this."

"I know. I keep telling myself that. But his charm is overpowering."

"I'll help you. I'll call around late tonight, after Liam has gone to bed, and we'll wait up for Lawrence. Three is a crowd. I'll be there to support you when you tell him not to come back or you'll call the police."

"That's a bit drastic, isn't it?"

"It's the only way to deal with burglars who keep coming back."

"Okay then. Call around after midnight and we'll wait up together."

Bridget brought some more biscuits with her, and Julia made a pot of tea. They sat in the kitchen and waited for Lawrence. They didn't feel a need to talk all the time, and in the moments of silence Bridget thought she could hear the sound of Liam eating imaginary biscuits, but she might have just been imagining that.

It was nearly three o' clock in the morning when Lawrence arrived. He must have been surprised when he arrived in the kitchen and saw Bridget there with Julia, but he didn't show it. He looked as if nothing could possibly disturb his calm demeanour. Bridget said to him, "We need to have a word about your nocturnal activities. Carry on with the burglary, by all means, but these affairs must stop. Especially the one with Julia. Have some biscuits and a cup of tea if you want to talk about it, but the outcome of any discussion will inevitably be the termination of your relationship with Julia."

He tasted one of the biscuits, and Bridget was amazed to see that his calm demeanour was shattered. He looked frightened. He put the rest of the biscuit down, and he fled from the house. Julia said she felt a weight off her shoulders now that he had gone, and judging by the look on his face, he wouldn't be coming back. She said she never suspected that Bridget was going to use her biscuits to threaten him. Bridget never suspected that her biscuits would have such an effect either, but she pretended it was all part of the plan.

She went home and went straight to bed. As she was drifting off to sleep she heard a noise downstairs. She down to investigate, and she found Lawrence waiting for her in the hall. Her heart was beating quickly. She didn't know if this was down to fear or to something else. She was afraid it was something else. She nearly fainted when he smiled at her. He walked slowly down the hall, stopped right in front of her and said, "I really need to know what was in that biscuit."

His words pulled the plug on his charm. She picked up an umbrella that was hanging on a hat stand in the hall, and she was just about to hit him when she heard the sound of a shotgun being loaded. Harry was walking down the stairs with the gun in his hands, but Lawrence was gone before he had a chance to aim. Bridget's heart started beating quickly again, and this time she knew it wasn't fear. She was glad she had a husband who had such easy access to firearms, rather than one who ate biscuits in his sleep and thought he could make a high chair for a baby after he had killed a bird with the bird table he made, in the process destroying any trust he had built up with the robins. All of Harry's faults were forgiven, at least for a few weeks. He could tell his hunting stories in his sleep and Bridget would just smile. Even when he accidentally shot the piano the smile remained in place, though it did begin to crack when he asked her why she had to make so many biscuits.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking very pleased with himself these days. Most of the locals look happy. Cork won the All-Ireland football final, Kilkenny didn't win the hurling, and the smell has gone. It stayed with us for over a month. Some people said it was so strong it could bend iron bars, but I doubt if the recent spate of vandalism on metal fences had anything to do with the smell. No one knows where it's gone, though there have been reports of a very strong smell looking out over the sea in Waterford.

The Unfriendly Ghost

2010-09-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

I love September. Autumn will cough to attract our attention to its presence, although because of the re-opening of the schools we've inevitably had a spell of summer weather. My great-grandfather used to spend most of September in the glasshouse, just admiring the show outside. A glasshouse wasn't a great hiding place when he wanted to avoid someone. He used to wear disguises then. He could do a very convincing imitation of a tomato plant.

My cousin Hugh and his fiancee, Annabel, spent many summer evenings visiting Annabel's aunt Dinah to keep her spirits up after her pet fox ran away. The fox wasn't really a pet. Sometimes he used to stand in her garden and stare at her. He reminded her of her late husband, who used to stand and stare at her as well, when he was alive. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if he was alive. He'd insist that he was alive and well, but there would be ample evidence to the contrary. And then when he really was dead no one would believe him.

It didn't take long for Hugh to grow bored of her company. She'd make a pot of tea and the three of them would sit in her living room while she told stories about all the things she'd like to see invented. Hugh gave up telling her that almost all of these things had already been invented because it only made her more depressed. One evening he suggested going somewhere, just to get out of the house for a while. The change of scenery would do Dinah good, he said. Both Annabel and Dinah liked the idea. It needed a few minor modifications, but essentially it was a good idea, they said.

After it was modified, the idea was for the three of them to spend a weekend in a guesthouse by the sea. Hugh pointed out that they had subjected his idea to major modifications, rather than minor ones, and his good idea had been obliterated in the process, but Annabel and Dinah were too busy planning the trip to pay attention to his objections.

On that Friday evening he found himself drinking tea in a room with a sea view, as Dinah spoke about the inventions. A fourth member had been added to the party: Rita, the owner of the guesthouse. She was fascinated by the inventions. She didn't seem to know that most of these things had already been invented. Hugh felt uneasy about staying in a guesthouse run by a woman who was unfamiliar with the concept of a toaster.

Rita told Dinah about the many inventions people had come up with to catch the ghost in this house. The ghost was called Jasper, and he used to own the house when he was alive. He was a rich man, and it was rumoured that he'd buried most of his money. Many gallant efforts had been made to apprehend his spirit and find out where the money was. Some people had built time machines. Some had hammered nails into planks. None of these techniques had worked, and the planks proved to be just as effective at time travel as the time machines.

Hugh managed to convince Annabel to let Rita baby-sit while they went out for the evening. They took a walk along the beach as the sun began to set. They went to a pub, where a man played the banjo and sang songs about the sea. When they left the pub it was dark. Black clouds veiled what was left of the blue sky, and a strong wind roused a symphony of sounds on the seafront. When they got back to the guesthouse, there was no one there. They found a note from Rita and Dinah, explaining that they had gone to visit Rita's sister. They wanted to find out if anyone had invented a machine for making coffee. Her sister was an expert in these things.

A storm was brewing. At eleven o' clock, Dinah phoned to say that herself and Rita would have to spend the night at Rita's sister's house because of the weather. There were no other guests staying at the guesthouse that night, and Rita told them to make themselves at home.

These latest modifications were making Hugh's idea seem like a good one again. Himself and Annabel had a sea-side guesthouse to themselves, and they'd managed to lose Dinah. He lit a fire, and they made some tea in the kitchen.

At half-eleven, the doorbell rang. Hugh and Annabel both went to the front door to see who was there. They found a very wet family who were looking for a place to stay for the night. The Donovans were on holiday. They had booked into a guesthouse in this town, but they couldn't find the place. Rita had told Annabel and Hugh not to take any guests for the night, but Annabel took pity on the family and she told them they could stay.

There were five young children in the family, three girls and two boys. The thought of sharing a house with five unruly kids sent shivers down Hugh's spine, which is why he tried to scare the guests in the hope that the Donovans would look for somewhere else to stay. He told them about Jasper, the unfriendly ghost. He said that this spirit didn't like kids, and no child had ever managed to stay the whole night in the house with him.

The Donovans certainly looked scared. They were shivering, but this might have been due to the fact that they were getting wet in the rain, and this might well have influenced their decision to stay. While Hugh showed them to their rooms, Annabel made them hot chocolate in the kitchen. They drank this as they sat around the fire. The kids kept asking questions about the ghost, apart from one of the boys, who only wanted to talk about wrestling. When he realised that no one shared his interest he started asking questions like 'Does the ghost have an interest in wrestling?'. In his answers, Hugh tried to make Jasper sound as frightening as possible. He said that wrestling was far too civilised a sport for this spirit. He preferred the sort of sporting occasions where even the spectators would be arrested if the police arrived. Spectators often get killed at these events, he said, and Jasper's biggest regret in death is that he's no longer able to get killed. This has diminished his enjoyment of the sporting events he loves.

After the kids had run out of questions they had nothing left to do but be scared, which was something they could do in silence. Hugh expected Annabel to be thankful to him for the way he subdued five kids on their holiday, but she didn't share his enthusiasm for scaring children. Even as a spectator sport it wasn't much fun, she said. He pointed out that sleep was one of her favourite pastimes, and she wouldn't be able to partake in this if he hadn't dampened their holiday spirits.

He had to retract this claim when he was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of five screaming kids, which was soon followed by the sort of sounds you might hear at one of those sporting contests that get banned. Furniture, crockery and glass were being broken downstairs, and the kids were still screaming.

They had been unable to sleep, so the five of them had gone out to explore the house. When they were in the kitchen, a flash of lightning cast the shadow of a tree onto the wall. The strong wind made the branches and their shadows move wildly. The kids thought this was Jasper and they started screaming. Matters got worse when they tried to turn on the light. The electricity had been knocked out in the storm. So after little or no deliberation they decided to partake in the pastime in which they excelled: they panicked.

Running around in the dark and breaking things would have been fun if they weren't so scared. One of them tried out his wrestling moves on the ghost. His efforts had no effect on Jasper, but he did defeat all of the crockery in a cupboard in the kitchen.

They surveyed the damage in the morning, when Dinah and Rita returned. The kids tried to explain what had happened, but it was difficult to make sense of their story because five different versions were being told at once. Some versions emphasised the weapons that Jasper held in his eight hands, and one version included a list of all the famous wrestlers who had joined the fight against the ghost. Despite the tangled story, everyone agreed that Hugh was to blame. He felt he had no choice but to pay for the damage and to clean up the mess. He spent the day sweeping floors, repairing furniture and spending money, while Rita took the Donovans on a boat trip to an island. This was her way of apologising for their traumatic stay in her guesthouse. Annabel went with them, but Dinah stayed behind because she was afraid of boats and of islands (she refused to think of Ireland as an island. She always imagined it joined to Canada. In some ways it would have been much easier to imagine it joined to Britain, but in other ways this would have been much more difficult to contemplate. Her father would turn in his grave if he thought she was dreaming of Ireland united with Britain. Her husband would remain completely still in his coffin, but that's not to say he wouldn't be upset). Under Rita's orders, Dinah supervised Hugh's work. She wasn't allowed help him. She didn't do much supervision either because she was too busy telling him about the electric clogs she'd like to see invented. Hugh often got the feeling that he was being watched. He wondered if the house really was haunted, and was the ghost Dinah's husband or was it Jasper. He started to think that his suffering was proving to be an enjoyable spectator sport, although Dinah's husband enjoyed staring at almost anything. He could gape with child-like wonder at a piece of string he'd dropped on the ground.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to September as well, especially the All-Ireland football final in a few weeks. It's Cork versus Down. Of course, there's the hurling final to endure first, and the prospect of Kilkenny winning five in a row. One of our neighbours has started flying a Tipperary flag, and he once launched a campaign to have Tipperary systematically ignored by the rest of the country. The county would never be mentioned again. It would be removed from maps and replaced with a lake.

Changes

2010-08-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

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.

How to use an evening

2010-07-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

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.

The Joys of Cooking

2010-06-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

The rain has returned after a few weeks of fine weather. It's because of the school holidays. I remember when I was young, it always started raining as soon as the school holidays started, and it kept raining until we went back to school in September. We'd sit in our classrooms and look out at the clear blue skies. But then, I also remember that it was always sunny during the school holidays, much sunnier than the summers we get now. I remember a hot air balloon rising out of a lake as well, but that's neither here nor there.

My aunt Bridget loves having the house to herself. On one Saturday afternoon, the kids were all out, either at sporting events or visiting friends or climbing mountains in other countries. Her husband, Harry, had gone on a fishing trip with some friends. They were hoping to catch a legendary fish, or at least to encounter something they could stretch into a good story. They'd almost certainly have to rely on encountering something they'd have to stretch to breaking point, because according to the tales told about the fish, it was over a hundred years old and it had a moustache.

She appreciated the silence of the house after they had all gone. The cat sat on the mat outside the back door. Bridget sat on a garden chair and purred contentedly as she thought about cooking the dinner. She enjoys cooking good food every bit as much as she enjoys eating it, and she enjoys thinking about cooking as much as she enjoys cooking. The cat's dinner came out of a tin, but he didn't seem to mind. He also enjoyed preparing his meals as much as he enjoyed eating, but this only applied to the dinners he killed. Bridget had never killed her own dinner and she always tried to avoid thoughts about where meat came from.

She went inside to start preparing the meal. She couldn't think of anything more relaxing than cooking when she had the house to herself, so she was annoyed when the doorbell rang, and she was even more annoyed when she opened the door and saw her sister, Elaine. Bridget knew that Elaine would end up staying for dinner, and that she'd keep talking while Bridget was cooking, and only Elaine would enjoy the meal. Before heading for home, sometime around midnight, she'd say, "I really enjoyed myself and that was an amazing chicken pie." And Bridget would have to smile and say 'You're welcome' when she really wanted to say 'I might have enjoyed the meal if you had been able to stop talking about your hair for a few minutes'.

As expected, Elaine never stopped talking. Bridget can easily stop listening, but it was still annoying to have the sound of her sister's voice droning on in the background while she was trying to cook. But she thought of a way to restore the peace and quiet for a while. She didn't have any cream for the apple tart they'd be having for dessert, so she asked Elaine to walk into town and get some cream at the shop.

Bridget appreciated the silence more than ever after Elaine left to get the cream. The gentle humming of the oven was as relaxing as the sound of waves on an isolated beach. But the silence lost its calming effect when it went on for too long. The dinner was nearly ready and Elaine hadn't returned from the shop. Bridget went outside to look down the road towards the town, and she saw her sister outside their neighbour's house. Elaine had never made it to the shop. She'd been talking to Bridget's neighbour, Sean, all this time. In truth, she hadn't done much of the talking. He'd been telling her about a book he'd been reading, '101 Things to do with Toast', and he'd still only reached number thirty-seven. He was up to number forty-five by the time Bridget finally managed to drag Elaine away. If they'd left at number forty they might have saved the dinner, but even before they had reached the front door of the house they got the smell of burn. The water had boiled off the potatoes, and the pastry on top of the chicken pie was black. Bridget was too angry to say anything.

Elaine said, "Why don't we try that new fast-food place in town."

"That's your response to the demise of my dinner? It would be like holding the funeral of a nun in a lap-dancing club."

"It doesn't matter. I wouldn't want to go there if you're planning a funeral for your dinner."

"I'm not planning anything."

"Let's go to a proper restaurant so."

"No."

"Don't sulk. It's only a dinner."

"I'm not sulking," Bridget said. She hated being told not to sulk, especially when she was sulking.

"Look, I'll cook something with whatever I find in the fridge."

"But..."

"No 'buts'. You go off to the shop to get the cream and I'll start work on the dinner."

Bridget felt she needed a relaxing walk to the shop, so she agreed to let Elaine cook. She walked quickly past Sean's house in case he started telling her about toast. With that hurdle out of the way she did her best to relax, but she couldn't stop thinking about her peaceful afternoon and her dinner, both of which had been ruined by Elaine, who was probably busy ruining the innocent items of food she found in the fridge.

Elaine made an outstanding lasagne with the food she found in the fridge. For Bridget, this was worse than the barely edible mess she'd been expecting. Her sister was an excellent cook, which was annoying, and Elaine irritated Bridget even further by constantly pointing out how much she hated cooking.

Bridget fought hard against enjoying the meal, but the power of good food was too strong. She started to relax again, and she was nearly back to her old self when they were eating the apple tart and cream. But things took a turn for the worse when Harry and his friends arrived back with the fish they'd be having for dinner. They kept pointing out that they had killed it themselves. People had been trying to kill this fish for hundreds of years, they said, and they had finally succeeded in catching it. This made them heroes.

Bridget was appalled by the fish. It was anything but legendary. Harry insisted that it had a bit of a moustache. Bridget had a close look at it, and she couldn't deny that it did have something resembling a moustache, but this only made the thing more reprehensible in her eyes. She dreaded the thought of cooking it for Harry and his drunk friends.

But she was rescued by Elaine, who said, "This fish would be perfect as part of the seventeenth way to use toast."

She couldn't resist trying out this recipe. Bridget poured herself a glass of wine, sat at the kitchen table and breathed an audible sigh of relief as her sister got out the frying pan and the toaster. Elaine had to admit that she enjoyed cooking, especially when it involved toast. Bridget had to admit that she enjoyed talking about the garden and drinking wine while other people cooked, and that she was glad her sister had paid a visit. Harry and his friends had to admit that there was nothing legendary about the fish they brought home, but they steadfastly refused to make any such admission. The excellence of the meal made with the fish was evidence of its legendary status, they said. In truth, the quality of the meal owed more to the toast than to the fish.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't trust my memories of past summers. He takes everything I say with a pinch of salt. I've become accustomed to the fact that he questions my mental acumen, and I try to use his superior intellect whenever I can. A few days ago, a brain surgeon called to the house. He asked me if I wanted any work done. I said I'd never considered having anything done to my brain before. He looked closely at my face and he told me I should definitely consider it, and that I might even need some work done before I start considering it, if I wanted to be able to consider it properly. I consulted the moose's head on this matter. The expression on his face told me that the brain surgery wouldn't be a good idea. I don't know why so many people assume that I need something done to my brain. Or else they believe that something's already been done to it, and that it can't be reversed.

The joy of an ill-advised venture

2010-06-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

I think the garden gnomes have formed their own cult. As the sun set on the summer solstice they were gathered in a circle in the orchard, all of them wearing white robes. On the following morning I found one of them in a wicker basket in the shed. He was dressed as a jester. The door was locked, so I've no idea how they got him into the shed. Their behaviour is disconcerting, but it could be worse. One of our neighbours has gnomes who took their clothes off and danced around a rockery at dawn.

My cousin Rachel once got a part-time job delivering bread for a baker. In a small van she'd take the bread to the local shops and restaurants, and when these deliveries had been completed she'd go to the houses of individual customers. Some of them would buy just a single loaf of bread at a time, but the baker still offered them free delivery. Rachel always enjoyed visiting these people. They looked forward to her visits as well. On sunny days they'd come outside whenever they heard her van approaching, and they'd have a chat in the garden. One man always sent his remote-controlled penguin out to collect the bread, but he'd still talk to her from a window.

After delivering bread to a man called Stephen, her next stop would be at the house of his sister, Fiona. They used Rachel to deliver insults to each other. For instance, Stephen once told Rachel to ask his sister if anyone else had asked her if her face was part of a witch's costume. Fiona responded to this by telling Rachel to ask Stephen if he'd done anything to diminish the aura around him, an aura that was fed by the smell from his clothes. It was so well-developed that in the right light you could see it practising its golf swing.

Rachel found out that the insults she delivered were the only communication between the two siblings. They'd avoided each other ever since the failure of a restaurant they set up together. Chess was the theme of this restaurant. There were thirty-two black tables and thirty-two white ones. At some tables, the plates and cutlery were black, and at others they were white. You and your companions could be asked to move to another table by one of the people playing chess. You wouldn't have to move far if you were a pawn, but the diners at a pawn table would be lucky to make it as far as dessert without being removed from the restaurant. You'd have to pay extra to sit at a king's table. The business failed because they kept throwing people out. On some occasions, only a few pieces would be left on the board at the end of the evening.

Stephen and Fiona stopped talking to each other after they closed down the restaurant. Rachel tried to convince them to sort out their differences, but they both insisted that there was no animosity between them. Every time they got together they ended up doing something stupid. They'd undertake a venture that would end in disaster, like the restaurant. If they didn't communicate solely through the medium of insults they'd end up hating each other. Rachel suggested getting the ill-advised venture out of the way as soon as they meet up. It could be something that wouldn't do too much harm when it ends in disaster, like a travelling theatre company. The stage would be a cart and the company would travel from place to place with the help of a donkey, so they could never go too far away from home.

Stephen and Fiona liked this idea, so they agreed to meet and set up the theatre company. Their company consisted of three members: themselves and the donkey. All three of them made important contributions to the performances of their plays, but the donkey took a back seat during the writing process. He'd happily have taken a back seat during the travelling as well, but they wouldn't have travelled at all if he had. This would have been only slightly less than the distance they travelled with the donkey up front.

They were expecting their theatre company to end in disaster, but it led to their greatest success. A film producer saw their play about the potato famine. With a few minor adjustments it was adapted into a Hollywood film, a romantic comedy about the perils of blind dates. The producer thought it was certain to succeed because he'd just adapted a play about the perils of blind dates, turning it into a film about the potato film. This film was a complete disaster. He was a firm believer in the idea that you could turn a disaster into a success by doing everything backwards.

In this instance, he was right. Stephen and Fiona made a fortune from the film, and they used the money to fund many ill-advised ventures, like their detective agency that would rely heavily on the intuition of a cocker spaniel, or their mobile bookshop that wasn't very mobile because it was on the back of a cart pulled by the donkey. Wasting all that money together was a hugely enjoyable experience, and they were grateful to Rachel for making it possible. They offered her a job in their wedding dress recycling centre.

The moose's head over the fireplace is paying more attention to the World Cup now. It's starting to get interesting, if you have an interest in these things. The wife's aunt is protesting against all the sport on TV by only talking about toast until the end of the World Cup. She has no interest in sport, but I don't know what she's getting upset about because she has no interest in television either. I thought it would be nice to get a break from her theories about why elephants should be red or why you shouldn't point at trees, but I'm starting to miss hearing about these things. She has surprisingly little of interest to say about toast.

The Book Club

2010-06-16T00:02:00.001-07:00

The fine summer weather is welcome, but the sun can make people act strangely. The wife's aunt is talking to the apple trees, although this sort of behaviour is relatively normal for her. One of our neighbours has come to believe that he's a river. He refuses to sleep at night because he's afraid of poachers taking his salmon.

My uncle Ben once joined a book club despite having little interest in books, and less interest in reading. The club was organised by one of his neighbours, a man called William who owned an old manor house near where Ben lived. William invited Ben to join the book club when they met in the local shop. William thought it would be a good way for him to get to know the neighbours, and to put his personal library to greater use. Ben agreed to join because he wanted to have a look around William's house.

On a Saturday afternoon, Ben went to the first meeting of the club with a friend of his called Eugene, who had also been asked to join the club. William greeted them at the front door. They were the first to arrive, and while they were waiting for the others William showed them around some of the rooms on the ground floor. He told them about his ancestors depicted in the portraits in the hall. They were fascinated by his great-grandfather, who devoted most of his life to perfecting his techniques for brewing compost. In the drawing room he poured them some wine. As each member of the club arrived in the room they were given a glass. When they had all arrived, William topped up their glasses before leading them to his library to begin their meeting.

The first book they'd be reading would be the memoirs of William's great-grandfather. There were more than enough copies of the book for everyone in the club. William had hundreds of copies of unsold books written by his ancestors. Ben would have joined a book club years earlier if he'd known they'd be drinking wine and reading books in which compost features prominently. William spent most of the first meeting telling them about his great-grandfather's life. To Ben's surprise, some of the club's members had no interest in compost. Nancy started knitting during the meeting.

Ben had plenty to say about the book when the club convened for their second meeting. William was delighted to hear that it was one of the best books Ben had ever read. Eugene had plenty to say as well, but the rest of the group didn't share their enthusiasm.

Nancy had nothing to say. She just kept knitting. Maurice started mumbling something about the book, but he soon digressed to tell them about his personal problems, and he broke down in tears. He said something about his wife leaving him and his dog howling at the moon, or his dog leaving him and his wife howling at the moon. He kept rambling on about his life. Ben paid no attention to this because it didn't seem to bear any relation to compost, but the rest of the group were fascinated by it.

At the end of the meeting, William said they'd continue discussing the book next week, seeing as they still had so much to talk about. Ben was hoping that they'd focus on the book again at that next meeting, but as soon as it began, Maurice picked up where he'd left off on the previous week. When he finished telling them about his troubles, other people started talking about their lives. Even Eugene told the group about his unrequited love for a woman who reads the news on a local radio station. The book club was turning into a self-help group. Ben had been hoping that if it was going to morph into anything it would be an organisation devoted to compost, or a forum for troubles encountered while raising chickens. He had no intention of contributing to a self-help group, but he kept going to the meetings for the free wine. He did occasionally say something, but only to convince people that he wasn't just there for the wine.

Three months after the first meeting, Eugene came to see Ben one day, and he seemed troubled. He told Ben that Nancy had knitted her own book, and that this book was a record of the stories told in the book club. Astonishingly, bits of it were actually legible. People would be able to read about all the embarrassing secrets divulged during their meetings, and there was even a possibility that this book might be featured on TV. Nancy was displaying her book at a crafts fair, and this fair was being featured on a TV programme that was being filmed later that day and would be broadcast on the following evening. The members of the book club were hoping to steal the book before Nancy took it to the crafts fair.

Ben agreed to help, but only because he thought there was a chance of free wine. As it turned out, there was no wine, but he enjoyed himself anyway. He knew he had nothing to worry about, and he felt some satisfaction in seeing how worried the others were about the airing of their secrets. He thought they were getting their just rewards for the way they abused the book club, and he was delighted when they failed to steal Nancy's knitted book.

But Ben had said much more to the group than he thought he had. A few glasses of wine will make him do things he doesn't know he's doing. Nancy's book was featured on the TV show, and she chose to read extracts from the chapter on Ben to illustrate the contents of the book. She had portrayed him as someone who had been given an interest in compost to replace the emotional life he'd lost, or had never acquired in the first place. She read the story of the time Ben spent a weekend trying to catch a cheetah in his garden. He went to great effort and expense in his pursuit of the creature, but it turned out to be a Labrador. She sensationalised her account of Ben's adventures, adding in a fictional love story that you'd expect to find in a tabloid newspaper, and certainly not in a book that had been knitted.

Despite the embarrassment Ben suffered, and the trouble he had explaining the love story to his wife, he was glad he joined the book club because he had some outstanding compost that year. He went to the next meeting of the club, and to his delight, they returned to a discussion of the book and no one said a word about their personal lives. Nancy's constant knitting made them keep their guards up.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been spending a lot of time staring at a painting on the wall. We change the paintings on a regular basis to keep him entertained. There have been too many dull matches in the World Cup so far to keep his mind occupied. The latest painting is of a double-decker bus. Some of the passengers look happy and some of them look sad. It's difficult to tell how the driver is feeling because he's a penguin, which would be a reason to look sad if you were a passenger. Or worried. If I was on a bus and I realised that the driver was a penguin I'd be worried.

Garden Rock

2010-06-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

Summer is blossoming. The hurling and football championships are well underway and we're on the eve of another World Cup. The sun is shining in all of my memories of past World Cups. Without the Irish team it's never going to be as exciting as the glory days of Italy in 1990, but I'm still looking forward to it. I've decided to support the Ivory Coast because their national flag is the Irish flag backwards. The wife's uncle says it's a good idea to support the inverse of the thing you have a natural affinity for. It's what made so many of his friends turn to God.

My cousin Albert formed a band with his friends, George and Neil. They had very different tastes in music, but they were able to put their musical differences aside for the sake of a higher goal: to attract women. The one major obstacle preventing them from achieving their goal was that none of them had the confidence to be the front man. If they had this confidence they wouldn't have needed a band to achieve their goal. Albert was on drums, Neil played guitar and George tried to do something barely audible with the bass. They needed a lead singer. They thought it was much more important to find someone with the right attitude rather than the best singer, and this is why they hired Wayne. They'd known him since their school days. He always had an abundance of attitude. In almost all walks of life it would have been the wrong attitude. It got him suspended from school and fired from jobs on a regular basis. He abhorred the very concept of authority, unless he got to tell people what to do. It was inevitable that he'd clash with teachers and bosses, especially the bosses who took great delight in making him clean up messes made by people who'd been drinking for most of the day and had then eaten something they wouldn't give to a dog if they could see it when they were sober. Wayne worked in the places that served food not fit for a dog, but he never lasted long in any job.

He agreed to join the band, as long as he got to write his own lyrics. Albert, George and Neil agreed because they believed that lyrics were even less important than having a lead singer who could sing. The lyrics he came up with were terrible, but they conveyed the right attitude. What he lacked in talent, he made up for in ego. He seemed to regard himself as a cross between Bono and Stephen Hawking, and this wasn't just when he was incapacitated by drink. He always sounded as if he was preaching some great truth, even in his songs about ice cubes or paper.

The band's first gig was in a pub. They excelled at avoiding the bottles thrown at them, but they were only partially successful in their aim of attracting women. A middle-aged woman called Hazel came up to them after the gig and she asked them to play for an audience in her garden. Wayne agreed without consulting the rest of the band. And so they played their second gig on the following afternoon in Hazel's garden, before an audience of Hazel and her friends. It was a nice setting on a nice summer day with nice people, but Albert, George and Neil didn't want nice. They wanted 'euphoric' and 'grandiose' and 'stupid'.

Albert was surprised to find that Hazel and her friends enjoyed the songs, despite the fact that they were actually paying attention to the lyrics. Obviously they'd never been shown how to use a rock song. Hazel would discuss the lyrics with Wayne at the end of each song. She listened attentively to all of his theories on war, ice cubes and clouds, and he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say about her hobbies, which included badminton and tea. His enjoyment of the gig probably stemmed from the fact that the audience were so appreciative. He readily agreed to do a second gig. He made no effort to consult his band mates on this. He acted as if it was his band, and the musicians were his disciples.

It took another seven gigs in the garden before Albert, George and Neil came to the conclusion that Wayne wasn't the right singer for the band. When they broke the news to him they put it down to musical differences. He said he'd been thinking of going solo anyway. They suspected that he was lying when he told them he'd been offered a record deal as a solo artist. They knew he was dreaming when he spoke of the fame and wealth that were in his reach.

Without Wayne, the band failed to fulfil its purpose. Albert, George and Neil were afraid that Wayne really would become a successful solo artist and they'd spend the rest of their lives regretting their decision to fire him. They didn't need to worry about this. He abandoned his music career shortly after Albert, George and Neil disbanded the band, but he was considerably more successful in the area of attracting women. The first Albert learnt of this was when he got an invitation to the wedding of Wayne and Hazel. She was old enough to be his mother, and his mother was only barely old enough to be his mother. The band re-united for one final performance at the wedding. They played some of Wayne's songs at the reception. After their performance, Albert, George and Neil finally found some success in their goal of attracting women, but only by pretending to be disciples of Wayne.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the World Cup as well. He's decided to support Honduras. Most of my friends and neighbours are supporting countries they know very little about because of the long list of countries they despise. One of the neighbours hates Germany because when he was on holiday there with his girlfriend he fell into a pond. She took photos and made sure that all of his friends and family saw him emerging from the water, covered in what could best be described as slime. He could blame himself for not tying his shoelaces, and he could attach some blame to his girlfriend for taking the photos, but it's easier to blame Germany. If he blames his girlfriend for anything she'll become as intimidating as Germany in the 1930s.

The Headlines

2010-06-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

It's nice to sit at the patio table and enjoy these long evenings. On some days it's even possible to eat outside. You could almost convince yourself you're in a different country. The garden gnomes are wearing sombreros, but that's a bit optimistic.

My aunt Audrey meets a friend of hers called Molly for coffee at least once a week. Audrey always looks forward to hearing her friend's latest news and Molly looks forward to telling it. Some news bulletins last for hours. Molly comes up with headlines like 'There's an ostrich in my garden', or 'I've been asked to demonstrate a hovercraft at a regatta'. When Audrey heard the headline 'One of my neighbours asked me to help him write his memoirs' she didn't take much notice of it because it came right after a report about being held hostage in a bank robbery that went wrong, but the memoir story became more interesting with each update in subsequent bulletins. This help involved accompanying her neighbour, whose name was Gordon, on visits to churches in the middle of the night, or posing as German tourists at a book launch.

Audrey was suspicious of Gordon. Molly didn't see anything unusual about the help she was providing because it was all just part of the roller coaster of her life, but Audrey was concerned about her friend. She tried to think of a way of making sure that Molly was okay.

While these thoughts were uppermost on her mind, she had to go to a shop one evening to get some biscuits and mustard. She really only needed the mustard, but she thought there was something odd about going into a shop and only buying mustard. If she had put more thought into it she would have realised that there was nothing odd about it at all -- people need mustard all the time, though perhaps not as often as they need bread or milk. But she ended up with mustard and a packet of chocolate biscuits, so her subconscious might well have been hindering further thought.

The shop was owned by a man called Roger, who was lighting his pipe when Audrey was there. It was the sort of shop where you could get away with smoking a pipe, one of a dying breed of shops where you might find eight different types of mustard but no cornflakes, where you could order a pint of Guinness when you went to get your morning paper, though your morning paper might be a week old.

As Audrey was paying for the mustard and biscuits, Roger said to her, "I heard you were concerned about your friend who's helping a neighbour write his memoirs."

"How did you hear about that?"

"Word gets around. It travels. And I have a habit of meeting words when they're on their travels, even the ones who move furtively at night. I can help ease your concerns. Possibly. I might end up making you even more concerned. I can find out information about the neighbour."

"How?"

"I can't say how. You're better off not knowing that. You might be better off not knowing about the neighbour as well. It's up to you."

"I'd definitely like to know more about Gordon."

"Come back tomorrow and I'll have something for you."

When Audrey returned on the following day, Roger had a fifty-page report about Gordon's past. She took it home and read it. If it was accurate, then Gordon had lived an extraordinary life. After the failure of his career as an Antarctic explorer he spent a week as the favourite photographer of celebrities in India. Audrey felt that there was nothing to be concerned about. It seemed as if Gordon and Molly had a lot in common.

A few days later, Audrey found herself in urgent need of a tulip, so she went to the nearest florist. As she was paying for the flower, Rita, the woman behind the counter, said, "I hear you got Roger to find out about the man your friend is helping."

"How did you hear about that?"

"A florist hears lots of things. Sometimes no one comes in here for hours and I can hear the flowers talk. If you can develop an ability to hear the flowers then you can hear lots of things."

"Well you're right. I did get Roger to find out about Gordon's past."

"Do you want to know how he got the information?"

"I'm not sure I do, but I'm sure I don't want to remain in the dark."

"He broke into your friend's house when she was out helping her neighbour and he made a report from her notes on the memoirs."

"Why would he go to such lengths just to provide an occasional customer with information on the neighbour of a friend?"

"Because the next time you need information about someone you'll go to him. And you'll almost certainly buy something when you're in the shop. He'd go to almost any lengths just to sell someone something they don't need."

Audrey was horrified at the thought that she might have been responsible for Roger breaking into her friend's house. She had to find out if it was true, to put her mind at rest. But the only person who could help her was Molly. After much deliberation, she decided to tell Molly everything.

Before the headlines at their next meeting, Audrey told the story of Roger and the information he provided. Molly was eager to find out if he had really broken into her house, so she told Audrey to go back to the shop and ask him to find out more information about Gordon's stint at a photographer. They'd follow him after he left the shop in the evening and see where he went to get this information.

Audrey went back to the shop that evening, and she bought a packet of chocolate biscuits, even though she didn't need them. Before she had a chance to ask Roger for more information, he said, "I hear you've been listening to Rita's stories about my methods for getting information."

"How did you... Yes. I have."

"You can't believe a word she says. She's completely insane. It's the flowers. Spend your days with nothing but flowers for company and you'll go mad. After she leaves work in the evenings she goes to a pond and has conversations with her reflection in the water. 'Hello Rita,' she'll say. 'Ah Rita, it's so nice to see you. How are you?' 'I'm doing very well, Rita. How are you?' 'Very well indeed. Thanks for asking. Are you still thinking of buying that tank?'"

Audrey left without asking Roger for more information. Molly was waiting in a car nearby. They had planned on following Roger, but when Molly heard what Roger had said, she suggested following Rita instead to see if she went to the pond.

So they went to the florist, and they parked at the other side of the street. After Rita closed the shop in the evening she got into her car and drove away. Molly drove after her. Rita stopped outside a house two miles away, and she went inside. Molly parked nearby.

"Looks just like someone going home from work," Audrey said. "I wouldn't think there's much chance of her going to a pond to talk to herself."

"Let's just wait and see."

They had to wait for half an hour for something to happen, and it was even more extraordinary than Rita having a conversation with her reflection. Roger arrived in his car. He parked in the driveway and he went inside. He looked just like someone coming home from work as well. Nearly an hour later, both he and Rita went out into the garden. While she watered some plants with a watering can, he watered the lawn with a hose.

"They look just like a married couple to me," Audrey said.

"I know. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. I've heard about the domestic lives of married couples. I've read about it in books and seen it on TV in documentaries, but I've never seen this sort of thing before. I could watch them for hours."

She would have watched them for hours if Audrey hadn't insisted on going home, but Molly returned on the following evening to spy on them again. For the next few weeks, all of her news bulletins were filled with stories about Roger and Rita. Headlines like 'Rita has a cat called Mr. Jingle' didn't have the same impact as past headlines, like 'I fell off a train'. The news bulletins lost all appeal for Audrey, but she only had to wait a few weeks before Molly got bored of watching Roger and Rita, and she was able to come up with headlines like 'A spotlight keeps following me when I leave my house at night'."

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the peace of a summer evening and the silence of a night. Nights weren't always this silent. One of our neighbours often played the bagpipes after midnight, and we could hear him even though he lived over a mile away. But he gave up the bagpipes when he started playing a cello made out of jelly. This doesn't make as much noise as the bagpipes.

Hide-and-Seek

2010-05-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is the sort of weather that makes you go outside and sing to something. Even the sound of other people singing didn't dampen my mood on Sunday. I spent the afternoon strolling around the garden, just appreciating familiar things dressed in bright sunlight or dark shadows. Most of the neighbours chose to spend the afternoon with the unfamiliar sights at a knitting festival. People are still telling me about the knitted teapots for stainless steel tea cosies, the knitted sheep, and the hundreds of knitted scarecrows I missed out on, but I'm glad I stayed in the garden.

My cousin Albert was planning on spending a few weeks doing as little as possible in the sun after finishing his summer exams in college one year, but when you want to do nothing, something always comes along. One morning, just two days after finishing his exams, he got a phone call from one of his neighbours, Denise, who had a small farm a few hundred yards away. All she said was, "I'm using that favour now."

He knew exactly what she meant, and he knew what it meant for his plan to do nothing. But a promise was a promise. He said, "I'll be there in a few minutes."

Denise had done him a favour six months earlier, after he bought a caravan in the pub one night. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but he regretted it on the following morning. He started to see the drawbacks then. Chief amongst them was the fact that he didn't want a caravan. He couldn't remember why he had wanted it on the previous night. There must have been some reason why he had agreed to pay far too much for it. He strained his aching head in his efforts to unearth that reason, but he found nothing. He didn't want a caravan, and even if he did he wouldn't have wanted one with holes where there shouldn't be any holes at all. He was faced with a simple choice: either give his head a rest and then try again to remember why he had wanted it, or else sell the caravan. He tried the latter option first, but he couldn't find a buyer, so he started searching his head again. He couldn't think of any reason why he would possibly want a caravan.

He was starting to think he'd have to resign himself to owning a caravan until Denise agreed to buy it. He said she could have it for nothing, but she insisted on paying him. He felt the lightness of heart of a man who didn't want a caravan and didn't have a caravan. He told her he owed her a favour. And he wasn't just saying that, he said. She had to use this favour.

Saying that seemed like a good idea at the time. He didn't think it was necessarily a bad idea when she phoned him and asked him to come over. He thought she'd get him to do some job on the farm, but when he arrived at her farm yard and saw her standing next to an elephant he started to worry. He thought it might be wise to ignore the elephant. He started talking about the fine weather, but she interrupted him.

"He's real!" she said. "The elephant! He's actually real!"

"Yeah. I thought he might be."

"My aunt Elsie has been talking about her elephant for years. 'I'm knitting Christmas stockings for my elephant,' she'd say. Or, 'Toby goes to the library with me.' Toby is the elephant. This elephant. We always thought he was a figment of her imagination, like her stories about armoured cars and gun-running, but he's real! She lives in Louth and I haven't visited her in years. We send each other two or three letters a year and there's the occasional phone call. Last week she phoned me and asked me to look after Toby for a few weeks while she attended to 'important business overseas'. I said I'd be delighted to look after him, thinking I'd hear no more about it, but this morning a truck arrived and Toby was on the back of it."

"And where do I come into this?"

"I'll be keeping him in a cow shed by night, but he'll be in a field by day, and I need you to watch him so he doesn't get away."

"Wouldn't I just be taking work away from a fence?"

"He can climb over fences, ditches or gates, or just demolish them. As soon as you turn your back he'll try to tip-toe away. Being an elephant, he'll make noise no matter how softly he treads, so there isn't much chance of him getting away as long as someone is there to watch him."

Albert remembered the caravan and he told himself it was a fair valuation of the favour.

But after two hours of watching Toby he started to wonder if this was another bad deal. He'd gone beyond the age when he'd pay to see an elephant in a zoo, and even when he was young and the sight of an elephant was a source of wonder he used to get bored after about twenty seconds of looking and pointing at them. After two hours, concrete walls of tedium were being built in his head.

He was distracted by the sight of a butterfly flying around in circles. He couldn't tell how long he was looking at the butterfly, but it was long enough for an elephant to escape. When Albert looked back he saw the gap in the ditch where Toby had left the field. Albert knew he'd have trouble explaining how a butterfly flying in circles could be more noticeable than an elephant tip-toeing through a ditch. He'd have to do his best to get Toby back before explaining this to Denise.

He ran after Toby, who started running when he heard Albert's footsteps. Toby seemed to be enjoying the chase. He resolutely refused to stop until he was too tired to go any further, and then he resolutely refused to go any further, even though he was lying on flowerbeds.

Albert didn't know who owned this garden. A man emerged from the house and slowly walked down the garden path towards Toby. After spending a few minutes inspecting the contents of the flowerbeds he said, "I think there's little doubt that this elephant is not real."

"That's where you're mistaken," Albert said. "You wouldn't be the first to make that mistake, but it's a crucial one."

"I'd be very surprised if this turned out to be real. If the elephant is real, then the lion in my glasshouse is probably real as well, and the leprechauns drilling for oil in my kitchen."

"Right. All I can say is that the elephant is definitely real."

"It doesn't matter what you say. The fact that you insist that this is real makes it very likely that you're not real. I haven't slept in over a week. It's this warm weather. I can never sleep in warm weather. And a few niggling worries aren't helping either. I find it much easier to deal with the big worries. It's the niggling ones I hate, like my sister's insistence on calling me by my real name after so many years of calling me Spitty. She started calling me that when she was three. Why did she have to suddenly stop when she's forty-three? Was it something I said or did? I've been hallucinating a lot recently. There are many occasions when I have to decide if something is real or not real. It's obvious that the elephant in my garden is not real."

"There's nothing I can say to convince you that it's real, but I know someone who can help you get to sleep. He's a psychiatrist. Sort of. After a brief chat with him you'll have no trouble nodding off. He'll ask you a few questions and he'll figure out exactly what needs to be said to put your mind at rest. I used his services a few weeks ago when I was struggling to sleep before my exams. I remember him asking me if I had any bad childhood memories relating to peas or celery, and the next thing I know I'm waking up on the floor of the pub on the following morning. And if you think I woke up there because I was drunk, you're wrong. They would have thrown me out at closing time if I was drunk. They knew I badly needed the sleep, so they left me there. People just stepped over me on the way to the bar."

The man who owned Toby's new bed agreed to watch the elephant while Albert went to get Frank, the sort-of-psychiatrist. He had a sort-of office in a pub. Albert took his time going there because it was a break from his elephant-sitting duties. Frank and Albert both took their time on the way back to see the patient. Albert spoke about the patient's lack of sleep, about being called Spitty and then not being called Spitty. It all made perfect sense to Frank. "I have a filing cabinet full of files on cases relating to childhood nicknames," he said.

"I didn't know you kept files."

"They're all in my head. Where else would I keep them? I can't explore other people's heads without living in my own."

Frank told Albert about a recent case involving the nickname 'Gorilla' and a confusion about what you'd find inside a light bulb.

When they got to the garden, they saw the man Albert had asked to watch the elephant, but the space he was watching was noticeably lacking in elephants.

"I thought you were supposed to be watching Toby," Albert said.

"Some pixies led him away. I assumed they weren't real. I have a memory of being fairly convinced that pixies aren't real. So what could I do to stop them? I have some control over what's in my garden but I have little control over the garden in my mind."

Albert followed the trail of destruction Toby had left on his exit from the garden. Frank stayed behind with his patient. Albert heard him say, "Would I be right in saying that one of your earliest childhood memories is of a frog?" Albert didn't hear an answer to that question. He just heard the sound of the patient landing on a flowerbed as sleep finally overcame him.

The pixies turned out to be kids who were playing with Toby in an orchard. Toby was lying in the shade, occasionally reaching up with his trunk to pick an apple. The kids were running around him, pretending that he was playing with them. They told Albert that this was their elephant, that his name was Henrietta, and that tomorrow would be a big day for Henrietta because the President was coming to meet him. Albert was in no mood to argue with kids, and he didn't think it mattered anyway because Toby looked so content in the orchard that it didn't seem likely he'd be moving any time soon. So Albert went home to get something to eat and have a rest. He watched horse racing on TV, and then he sat outside in the sun for an hour before going back to the orchard.

Toby had already left. Albert followed the trail to another garden. This one was owned by Mrs. Foley. She had no trouble believing that the elephant was real because she could see the evidence of the destruction done to her flowerbeds. She reacted like someone staggering through a battlefield in the aftermath of a ferocious battle. She was overwhelmed by the destruction. Albert thought it would be a good idea to get away before she returned to being whelmed, and Toby seemingly shared this thought because he agreed to be led back to the farm.

He slept soundly in the cow shed that night. Albert had a good night's sleep as well, but he wasn't looking forward to a full day of elephant watching. After two hours of looking at Toby in the morning, and ignoring butterflies, he didn't think he'd be able to cope with the stress of a full day spent watching an elephant. His plan to do nothing for a few weeks had distinctly less of an elephant flavour than this. He had to do something, so he decided to play hide-and-seek with Toby. He turned around and started counting to a hundred, and he kept counting when he heard Toby knocking down the gate.

The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't need to be watched to make sure he doesn't get away. Maybe there's someone out there who owns the body of a moose, and they have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't wander off. The wife's uncle says that one of his first jobs was looking after a sleep-walking donkey. The donkey led him into all sorts of trouble, which they both enjoyed. That donkey was probably the only donkey ever to go hang-gliding and never to find out that he'd been hang-gliding because he slept through the whole thing, and afterwards his minder struggled to explain the concept of hang-gliding to him.

Finding a place to relax

2010-05-19T02:19:00.000-07:00

The garden gnomes are looking forward to the summer. They have big plans. Some of them have been digging a hole in the orchard. I'm not too concerned about this. If all of them joined together they might be able to dig a hole big enough to trap me, but eight of them have formed a jazz band. I've heard them practicing at night. They made their own instruments from things they found in the shed. The musical instruments in the shed would be far too big for them. These instruments have been there since my grandfather abandoned plans for his band. He had recruited some friends to play with him, but there were too many disagreements, and he feared for their friendships, so he abandoned the band. At first the disagreements concerned things like the name of the band or what sort of headgear they should wear. Within a few days they were having ferocious arguments about whether or not you should carry on as if nothing had happened after you've spilt a jug of milk on the carpet in a neighbour's house.

My cousin Charlotte once found herself in dire need of a way to relieve her stress. At work she shared an office with two women who kept humming to themselves for most of the day. She had learnt to live with this until builders started working next door. The women just kept humming happily to themselves, and whenever the building noise ceased the humming seemed louder than ever.

In the evenings she often went for walks along the banks of a river to relax. She needed these walks more than ever while the builders were working in the office next door, but the evenings were ruined by a boat club who were planning on recreating a naval battle on the river. They practised for the event each evening. As far as Charlotte could make out, this practise was no more than men on boats shouting at each other through megaphones, each night getting closer to a real battle.

She was sure she'd be able to relax when she went to a pub to take part in a table quiz with some friends one evening. At the end of the quiz, the scores were tied between Charlotte's team and a team who called themselves The Dull Thuds. The quiz master said he'd ask each team a tie-breaker question to settle it. They had to nominate someone to answer this question. Charlotte's friends all chose her.

The other team went first. A man called Dennis was chosen to answer their question. The quiz master said to him, "Do you know where Tashkent is?"

"No," Dennis said.

"Correct. That means the other team need to get this right." The quiz master turned to Charlotte and said, "Where is Tashkent?"

Charlotte took a guess at Russia, but the quiz master said, "I'm afraid that's incorrect. The answer is Uzbekistan."

Charlotte was furious with the way they lost the quiz. Her stress levels were higher than ever. She met Uncle Cyril on the following day and she said, "I desperately need to do something to relax, and the fact that I desperately need something only makes it more difficult to relax. I'm starting to think I'm going mad."

Cyril said, "If you think you're going mad, talk to yourself about it."

"I'm not sure that's going to help."

"Then you could try helping clear the old newspapers out of my study."

"Is it going to help me or is it just going to help you?"

"Well it can't do you any harm."

It did do her harm. There were hundreds of old newspapers in the study. When she was lifting a pile of them down from the top of a bookcase she didn't notice that there was a jar full of pens on top of the pile until all of the pens and the jar fell on her head.

"There's a jar full of pens on top of that one," Cyril said.

Charlotte discussed her stress with a friend of hers called Elinor. "You're looking for relaxation in the wrong places," Elinor said. "You're looking for it in places where you think you'll find it, like the walk by the river or the table quiz in the pub. You have an expectation about how these things will go, and when they don't go according to expectations you get stressed. What you need is a leap into the unknown. Do something where you have no idea what's going to happen. Anything could happen and it wouldn't go against your expectations. Everything that happens will be exciting. Your mind will be engaged, and that's the way to ease your stress. When most people want to relax they try to do as little as possible, but I always try to do something new and exciting. You're welcome to come along on my latest adventure."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to spy on a chocolate factory tonight. I came across this place by chance last week when I was driving to a beach and I got lost on the narrow roads. This factory is out in the middle of nowhere. It's a huge square building, and it looks as if the exterior walls are made out of oak planks. Some people living nearby told me that the factory's owner, a man called Charles, hasn't left the building in over twenty-five years. He's very secretive about his methods. There are rumours that he's been working on a chocolate replica of a U-boat for years, and that he has workers who use telepathic powers to alter the flavour of the chocolate. One man told me that underneath the factory there's a particle accelerator that's used to make chocolate fudge bars. The canteen is as good as any restaurant. A chamber orchestra play there to calm the nerves of the workers. Happy workers make happy chocolate. This is especially true of the workers who use telepathy. Their sleeping quarters are like something you'd pay a few grand a night for in a hotel. Some of the workers hardly ever leave, and when they do it's always on busses or cars with dark windows."

Spying on a factory in the middle of the night didn't sound very relaxing, but she decided to accept Elinor's argument that she'd only ease her stress by doing something that didn't sound very relaxing. As they were hiding behind bushes at two o' clock in the morning, observing the factory through binoculars, Charlotte did start to feel relaxed, even though their mission was likely to result in failure. There was a line of windows near the factory's roof. Lights were on in some of the windows, but they couldn't see in. The glass was blue.

Charlotte feared greater stress than ever when she heard a voice. "Spying on the factory, are ye?"

They looked around and they saw a man wearing the uniform of a security guard. They assumed he was guarding the factory.

"No," Charlotte said. "We were... bird-watching."

"Ye don't need to worry. Every night I meet people who come here to spy on the factory and I don't worry about it. If ye actually made it into the factory I'd probably lose my job, but it's never happened before. That's why I love my job."

"Can you tell us about what's going on inside?"

"I haven't been in there in twenty-five years. There wasn't anything extraordinary to see back then, but I know it's changed a lot over the years. Charles used to run the factory with a man called Edwin, but their business partnership came to an end with a disagreement twenty-five years ago. Edwin left to set up his own chocolate factory in Scotland. We get mail from there at least once a year. Ever since Edwin left, Charles has hardly ever left his factory. He's been entirely free to run the place according to his own peculiar ideas."

The security guard wished them luck in their observations and he walked away.

"I wonder what Edwin and Charles disagreed over," Elinor said.

"We'd have to go to Scotland to find that out."

"Let's go then."

"To Scotland?"

"Yeah. Come on." Elinor started walking away.

"Are you mad?" Charlotte said.

"I don't think so."

"Oh. Okay." Charlotte followed Elinor.

It took three days of travel down remote roads in the Scottish Highlands before they finally found Edwin's factory. They had given the security guard a small bribe to get the address. He would have given the address without a bribe, but he took the money anyway. He said he'd use it to buy something for a dog.

This factory was nowhere near as impressive as the one Edwin had left behind in Ireland. It looked just like a shed. Edwin opened the door when they knocked on it. He was pleasantly surprised when he found out that they had travelled all the way from Ireland just to see his factory. They were surprised when he welcomed them in to see his operation. They had assumed that he'd set up his factory in such a remote place because he was as secretive as his former business partner. On the subject of Charles, he was willing to tell them all they wanted to know. Their business relationship had ended because of a disagreement over what colour the security guards' shirts should be. Edwin wanted blue but Charles wanted grey. "It was just one of those things we couldn't agree on," Edwin said. "We had agreed to disagree on much bigger things, like wars or what to do about fires. But somehow the little things always caught us out. We nearly came to blows over how to make vegetable soup, and neither of us even liked vegetable soup. We couldn't reconcile our differences over the shirts, so I left to set up my own factory here, and make my security guards wear blue shirts. Of course, I never actually needed security guards, but I'm still glad I came here. I prefer the relaxed atmosphere of my factory. From what I've heard, Charles is anything but relaxed."

There wasn't much to see in Edwin's factory. He had a few employees making chocolate and baking. They spent most of their time sitting at a table, drinking tea and eating their creations. They asked Charlotte and Elinor to join them for afternoon tea, which went on until closing time in the evening.

As they were driving away, Elinor asked Charlotte if she had enjoyed the afternoon.

"I really didn't need to come to Scotland for that," Charlotte said. "I could have done it all at home. But it probably would have been really irritating at home. Someone would have called on the phone and asked me to look after their pet rats or their children. One of them would be referring to her children when she asks me to look after her pet rats."

"We should set up our own chocolate factory."

"That's a great idea. I could make some rhubarb pies for it."

"I know the perfect location. My aunt converted her garden shed into an office when she set up her dating agency, but that never got off the ground. I'm sure she'd let us use it for our factory."

They worked in this factory in the evenings after work. They only hired people who didn't make annoying humming noises, didn't have annoying laughs and were never likely to talk about pet rats or children in the factory. They consumed everything that they produced. Rumours started to spread about what was going on inside. It was claimed that they were using black magic to make the chocolate, or that the chocolate factory was really a cover for a bomb factory. People started spying on them. Charlotte liked the idea of people hiding in trees, observing them through binoculars. She knew she was probably helping them relax simply by relaxing herself.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking very relaxed these days. I think he's looking forward to summer as well. Some people stare at him when they want to ease their stress. I find it impossible to relax when people stare at me. In fairness, the staring is very often the result of something I've done, so I've no one but myself to blame. When I'm covered from head to toe in strawberry jam, popcorn and feathers, I can't complain if I attract the attention of onlookers.

Visions

2010-05-12T00:30:00.000-07:00

The grass needs to be cut, but I don't feel like doing anything to the garden for a while. One of our neighbours had a garden party on Saturday afternoon. I'm certain he said it was a garden party, but when we got there he explained that it was actually a gardening party. These 'ing's have caused me nothing but trouble in the past. Some of the guests were happy to mow lawns, dig up weeds and plant flowers. Others, myself included, came up with some elaborate plots for revenge. But all of these plots were abandoned because the food and drink we were given in the evening was of an exceptionally high standard.

My cousin Charlie got a visit from one of his neighbours one Saturday afternoon. It was a man called Ron, who was new to the area. Charlie had only met Ron once before in the local shop, so he was very surprised when his new neighbour called around and said, "I was wondering if you'd like to come to my wedding."

Charlie asked him why he'd ask a virtual stranger to his wedding. Ron said, "My fiancee, Stephanie, will think I'm inadequate if I can only invite a small handful of friends to the wedding. She has a swarm of friends. That's the only way to describe them. She can't know any of them very well because there are so many. I'm perfectly content with three or four close friends who I know well, who share my antipathy towards crowds. I've never had good experiences with crowds or swarms. The noise they make as a group is bad enough, and it's ten times worse when you have to talk to one of them. It's possible to detect a few words in the noise, if you pay close attention. They assume that you're one of the swarm, that you actually want to be there, and you want to hear about every twist and turn of a conversation they had with a friend who only recently discovered, to her horror, that duck eggs are made by ducks. Stephanie is always going to parties or barbeques to maintain her social life. And weddings. I've had it up to here with weddings. Things always go wrong for me at these gatherings. I'll spill something on my clothes or I'll trip and knock over a table holding things that will spill on my clothes. People always end up pointing and laughing at me. They think I enjoy being pointed and laughed at. I was at a party last week and a clock fell on my head. When they'd finished pointing and laughing at me, one of them got a black marker and drew the face of a clock on my face while others held me down. They thought that this is what I wanted. The very fact that I had to be held down would tell a normal person that it's not what I wanted, but there are times when they actually want to be forced into doing things against their will. That might sound like a contradiction, but I've heard all their stories. They'll tell you about the time their friends kidnapped them, took them on a terrifying night-time trip through the fields on a trailer and left them in a pile of manure without any clothes, and they'll tell you it was the best night of their lives. After they'd finished pointing and laughing at the clock they'd drawn, one of them said that the clock had stopped my face, but at least I'd be right twice a day. Most of them didn't understand that, but they all thought it was hilariously funny."

"I know exactly how you feel. I hate crowds as well. The last time I was at a wedding I became the target of a group of kids. I was their prey, their entertainment for the day. I had to endure a lot of pointing and laughing from the kids and from people who have the brains of kids, or the mentality of kids. Most of the adults there wouldn't have been as smart as those children. I'd have admired their resourcefulness if I hadn't been the target of their ruses. I still haven't figured out how they managed to steal my shoes without my knowledge. There are some weddings you have to go to even though you'd rather be kidnapped at night and dumped in a pile of manure. From what you've told me, some people would love to go to a wedding even though they'd rather be kidnapped at night and dumped in a pile of manure. Seeing as I've only met you once before in the shop and our brief conversation concerned the quality of the cabbages on sale, I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline your invitation. But I would like to help you out. I could introduce you to some friends of mine who love going to weddings."

"That's an offer I'll gladly accept."

Charlie introduced him to Alex, Brendan and Laura, and they all said they'd be delighted to go to Ron's wedding. Alex loves to talk, and he loves large gatherings like weddings because he'll never run out of people who'll get sick of hearing him talk, and every so often he'll meet someone who shares his interest in the way some things are yellow and other things are not. Brendan loves weddings simply because they're a way to meet women, and he'd have to be bursting with energy for the whole day if every woman there was sickened by his company by the end of the night. Laura enjoys weddings because she loves seeing people expressing their joy on such a happy day, though she likes going to funerals as well.

A few days after the introductions were made, Charlie met Ron in the shop again. Charlie was going to say something about the improvement in the cabbages, but Ron said, "I'm in love!"

"You seem surprisingly enthusiastic about your wedding," Charlie said.

"Wedding? No, the wedding's off. I'm in love with Laura."

"Since when?"

"It took about half an hour of getting to know her before I realised that we were perfect for each other and that Stephanie was the last person I should be spending the rest of my life with. Laura is nothing like Stephanie. She has no interest in amassing vast quantities of friends she barely knows and going to parties with idiots. She'd rather go for a walk with me, and just talk about things."

"It does sound as if Laura is more suited to you. Is Stephanie upset?"

"She'll be fine when she realises that I'm the last person she should be spending the rest of her life with. The only reason she wanted to marry me was because a friend of hers told her he had a vision of her in ten years time, a happy family scene with her as the wife, me as the husband, and little angels as the kids. I don't know which part of it is more unlikely -- me being happily married to Stephanie or kids being little angels. She has complete trust in the visions and proclamations of this man because she thinks he's a mystic, and she seems to think that having a beard qualifies him as a mystic."

Charlie had another visitor to his house that evening. It was Stephanie, and she was very upset. "I heard about what you did," she said. "Why did you do that to me?"

"I didn't mean to do anything to you. I'm very sorry about the way things worked out, but..."

"My fiance invited you to our wedding and you thought to yourself, 'I need to introduce this man to another woman.' And you're saying you didn't mean to do anything to me?"

"Yes, but..."

"Don't think you'll get away with this. I have friends who are very angry about what you did to me. I don't know what they've got planned for you, and I don't want to know until after they've done it. It'll be something to look forward to."

She smiled before she walked away. Charlie was afraid that her friends would kidnap him in the middle of the night and dump him in a pile of manure, but that would be the sort of thing they'd do if they wanted to cheer him up. He had to somehow convince her that he hadn't meant her any harm, that he was actually trying to do her a favour, that he had actually even done her a favour.

He went to see her, and he told her that his intervention had only come about after a mystical friend of his had a vision in which she was happily married to a man who most certainly was not Ron.

"Who was it?" she said.

"It's... I can't say."

"It's you, isn't it?"

"No. I mean... no."

"It's you!"

"No. I can't say who it is because... my friend with the beard couldn't say who it was."

"There's no need to worry. I know it's you. Why else would you be so concerned about breaking up my engagement? I've never even met you before. And why would your friend tell you about it? Why would he think you'd need to know about a woman you've never met before?"

"There's logic in that. Just let me have a think about this for a second."

While Charlie was thinking, some of her friends arrived. She introduced them to him, and they could see by the look in her eyes that he was the new man in her life. More friends arrived, and soon a party had started to celebrate Stephanie's new-found happiness. Charlie got the feeling that this gathering was taking on the tone of an engagement party. People were congratulating him.

Another vision was called for. A mystic was needed as well, and when he tried to think of someone who could fill the role, he thought of Nick, who smelled of spirits and he rarely shaved. His appearance suggested that he had no regard for material, worldly things. He could easily fool Stephanie into thinking that his mind was in a higher realm. Charlie's plan was for Nick to come to the party and identify the man he saw in his vision. Charlie needed to choose someone to be that man. There were many candidates at the party. After giving the matter some consideration, he chose a man called Jake. He thought that Jake would be ideal for Stephanie because he seemed perfectly at home in a swarm of people who never fail to laugh when someone says the word 'bongo'.

Charlie phoned Nick and outlined the plan. Nick's reward would be a bottle of whiskey, so he was eager to play his part. He arrived at the party half an hour later. Charlie pointed out Jake, and shortly afterwards Nick pointed at Jake and said, "It's you!" Everyone looked at Nick. "You're the man I saw in my vision. You're the man who'll marry Stephanie."

Stephanie gazed at Jake as if she believed Nick. Jake looked as if he'd just been bound, gagged and kidnapped in the middle of the night. Charlie slipped away rather than waiting around to see if this would turn out to be an enjoyable experience for Jake.

The moose's head over the fireplace is staring at a painting of actors performing on a stage. The wife bought it at an auction. It's difficult to avoid staring at it. I spent two hours contemplating the scene yesterday, and during that time I became convinced that the actor playing the devil is madly in love with the actress playing the devil's pilot. The wife's aunt says that she once joined a church whose members spent most of their time praying that the devil would find love, and their prayers proved to be effective. They saw him one night with his personal fitness trainer (they knew that she was his personal fitness trainer because this is what they had prayed for). The happy couple were taking a romantic walk along the banks of a river. Every so often, the devil would forget himself and grab a duck to bite its head off, but his personal fitness trainer always stopped him, which was exactly what the wife's aunt and her friends had prayed for.

The Car and the Curse

2010-05-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

I came across my grandfather's plans to build a cafe in the garden. Like many of his plans, they never came to fruition. There were a few plans that he put into action, and a few of them turned out to be successful, like the summer he opened the gardens to the public. The success of this venture is what gave him the idea for the cafe. One woman used to come to the gardens every day. She spoke to sunflowers, and sometimes sunflowers spoke back to her, but this might have been the effects of sunstroke. Being insulted by a sunflower was much more devastating than being insulted by a person. People had absolutely no idea what they were talking about when they insulted her, whereas sunflowers always told the truth. Fortunately, insults were rare, and she was never insulted by any of the flowers or trees in these gardens.

My cousin Hector used to meet up with his friends, Sean and Steve, every Saturday morning. When Sean bought a second-hand metal detector, Hector and Steve spent a lot of time following him through fields as he searched for buried treasure. Hector and Steve got bored of this fairly quickly, but Sean was losing none of his enthusiasm for finding bottle tops and bullets. He was spending most of his time searching with his metal detector, regardless of whether or not he had followers.

Hector was trying to convince his daughters, Alice and Grace, to go to bed one Saturday night. Whatever argument he put forward, they always came up with a brilliant counter-argument. He thought that he'd tire them out eventually if he kept coming up with arguments, but he was starting to get tired himself and they were still as bright as ever. He was worried that he'd have to accept defeat to his daughters, so he was glad when Sean rang the doorbell and said there was something Hector had to see. They called to Steve's house to collect him, and then they walked to the woods. Sean said he'd been searching in the woods with his metal detector, and he'd finally found the treasure he'd been waiting for.

He led them down narrow paths amongst the trees, and then they left the paths and walked through the undergrowth. Hector could think of many arguments against walking through the woods late at night when you can't see where you're going, but he kept reminding himself of the treasure at the end of their journey.

The treasure was hidden beneath a canvas cover. It was an old Rolls Royce. It looked as if it had been abandoned in the woods for decades. The car was in poor condition, and even if you wanted to take it out of the woods there wasn't enough space to get it out through the trees. Hector couldn't figure out how it got into this resting place, though he had to accept that his mental faculties were probably impaired after arguing with his daughters.

Sean was determined to get the car out of the woods. He might have to cut down a few trees, but this car was his treasure and he wasn't going to abandon it. The car hadn't lost its battle with rust, but it would take a lot of work to restore the silver paint with the red line down the side. Sean said he'd get the engine running first, while the car was still hidden by the trees. His friend Doug was a mechanic who'd relish a job like this.

Sean worked on the car every evening for the next three weeks. Doug was there on most of those evenings. Hector and Steve often went along to help as well. Sean had to pay for most of the parts needed for the engine, but he found some of them amongst the junk in and around his house. He had amassed a vast supply of junk even before he started using his metal detector.

One afternoon he was out in his back yard, using an old kettle to hammer a lawnmower that looked as if it would benefit from a good hammering. He could have walked the three yards to get his hammer, but the kettle was close at hand, so he used that. It was doing a good job as a hammer until the handle came off the kettle, or the kettle came off the handle and it flew threw the air, landing in Mrs. Darcy's garden. He looked through the hedge. The kettle had landed in a flowerbed. The last time he was on her property, she threatened to strangle a swan unless he left. The death of the swan would be on his conscience, she said. She obviously doesn't know much about Sean's conscience. A lot gets thrown at it, but very little sticks. He couldn't imagine himself mourning the passing of a swan strangled in his name. He wouldn't give it a moment's thought if he could use that moment to think about a tin of biscuits.

Mrs. Darcy didn't like Sean because he once made fun of her son's van. Her son is a country singer. He has some catchy songs, but he's developed an ego that's in no way justified by his achievements. If he spent his days nursing injured swans he'd be fully entitled to his sense of his own importance, and I'd imagine he wouldn't have to look far for patients if he set up a swan hospital.

Sean had to get the kettle back before she saw it. He had seen her driving away in her car earlier that day, so he crept through the hedge and ran across the lawn to the kettle's landing site. The flowerbed was near a window at the side of the house. After he had picked up the kettle he couldn't resist looking in the window.

He wasn't surprised by what he saw inside. The room was like the inverse of a room in his house. Most of his enemies had rooms just like this one. The place was spotless. The crystal vases on the sideboard looked as if they'd recently been polished, and the flowers they contained were fresh. The furniture showed few signs of wear and tear, and the carpet looked more comfortable than any of Sean's furniture.

He was just about to leave when he noticed a photo in a silver frame on the sideboard. It was an old colour photo, possibly from sometime in the sixties. In it, Mrs. Darcy's father was standing next to a car, a silver Rolls Royce with a red line down the side. Sean was convinced that this was the car he had found in the woods.

He told Hector and Steve about the photo. Hector suggested going to visit a man called Colum, who used to know Mrs. Darcy's father, Richard, back in the sixties. Richard worked in the music business back then. He managed bands and he owned a dance hall. He wasn't as successful as he liked to pretend he was. The Rolls Royce was the perfect tool for this pretence. The car was cheap because the man who sold it said he needed the money for an emergency wedding.

They went to see Colum, who remembered the car well. He told them that shortly after Richard had bought the car he found out the real reason why the seller was so eager to get rid of it. The Rolls Royce was cursed. Whoever owned the car would be plagued by misfortune. Accidents started happening to Richard. He was always falling down holes or being chased by vicious dogs.

He decided to abandon the car in the woods. He told his family that he'd sold it for a fortune. A few years later, he had a heart attack after being chased by a vicious dog, and he died.

At first, Sean dismissed the curse, but he became worried when accidents started happening to him as well. In truth, accidents have always been happening to him because he doesn't take enough precautions to avoid them. After abandoning the car, he was hit in the face by a piece of timber while he was hammering a chest of drawers with a portable television. He nearly set his coat on fire while he was trying to fix a wooden spoon, and he was hit on the head by three golf balls. This was a typical week for Sean. He used to go for walks on the golf course to annoy the golfers. They'd aim at him. But he thought all of these accidents were because of the curse, and he realised that he couldn't escape the curse as long as he was the owner. Richard couldn't avoid the plague of bad luck after he abandoned the car, and this bad luck eventually killed him. Sean became the new owner of the car when he started working on it, and he believed he had to pass it on to someone else before he'd escape the misfortune.

So he started working on the car again. His plan was to get the engine going and remove the car from the woods, and then he'd try to find a buyer. He found a way to get the car out, and he'd only have to cut down seven trees. This was a job that would have to be done at night. Hector and Steve agreed to help, but Steve insisted on planting new trees to replace the ones they'd cut down.

Sean spent most of the money he had on the car. He didn't have much. He had to search through all the junk he had in and around his house to find all the coins and cash he'd hidden away. But he believed all the time, effort and money spent would be worthwhile. It was a matter of life and death. The sound of the engine roar in the woods at night was like music to Sean's ears, a sound that was almost as beautiful as the roar of the chainsaws.

They successfully removed the car from the woods. When it was hiding under sheets behind Sean's house, his conscience finally woke up from its long slumber. He wondered if it would be right to pass on the curse to the new owner, someone who might be entirely undeserving of the misfortune. He decided to give the car to Mrs. Darcy instead. He'd tell her it was a peace offering. He found the car in the woods and he knew that her father had owned it. So he decided to renovate it, with the help of his friends, and give it back to its rightful owner, the daughter of its former owner. Sean felt no guilt about passing the curse on to Mrs. Darcy. She really was the rightful owner of the car. She should have inherited it from her father, and she should inherit the curse as well. Sean couldn't think of anyone more deserving of a potentially lethal dose of misfortune.

So he drove the car to her house and parked it in the driveway. She came out when she heard the familiar sound of the engine. It brought back many happy memories of her youth. Sean had only just begun his story about finding the car in the woods when she interrupted him. "I know about the curse," she said.

Sean was doing his best to pretend that he knew nothing of the curse, but she paid no attention to him. "I'll take the car anyway," she said. "I know someone who'll buy it from me, someone who might even pay a lot of money for it. He loves his cars. I've been looking for a way to get revenge on him for a long time. Ever since 1972, when he drew my face on a rock. I'd have forgotten about that a long time ago if he wasn't such a good artist. Everyone knew it was me, and his painting wasn't very complimentary. We've been trading insults ever since, and the occasional rock. I'll tell him that I've had a change of heart with regard to my hobby of collecting enemies. I've realised that life is too short, and bearing grudges only makes it shorter. I'll say that my father's Rolls Royce has been rotting away in my garage for years, and I know that he loves old cars, so I'd like him to have it. At a cost, of course. But it won't cost an arm and a leg."

A few days later, Mrs. Darcy called around to Sean's house and she told him that her plan had gone perfectly. The man who had painted her face on a rock was now the new owner of the car. She invited Sean, Hector and Steve around to her house for dinner that evening because she wanted to thank them for their part in helping her finally get revenge on her enemy.

It turned out to be the best meal Sean had eaten in years, and he saw it as confirmation that the curse had been lifted. As they were eating their dessert he asked Mrs. Darcy if she had felt uneasy about passing on such a deadly curse.

"There isn't really a curse," she said. "That was just a story my father came up with, an excuse to abandon the car in the woods. He wanted to get rid of it after he found out the real reason why the previous owner was so eager to sell. This car was once owned by a singer called Greg Architoggle, who was hugely popular for a while in the early sixties. It all went wrong for him when he released an album of songs he wrote himself. He thought it would make him a global star. He was full of enthusiasm for this album after years of frustration because of having to sing other people's songs, and pretending to be someone he wasn't. His fans didn't share his enthusiasm. They loved him when he was someone he wasn't, but they didn't like the real Greg. There were numerous songs about making a life-size woman out of tomatoes, butter and wire hangers. It sounded as if it was something he had actually done. Her name was Geraldine. His love song for Hitler didn't go down too well either. The album destroyed his career. No one in the industry would touch him with a barge pole after this. I don't know if any of them had actual barge poles, but almost everyone had a stick of some description. Hardly a day went by when they didn't have to trash a producer or a drummer. If they saw Greg, they'd start swinging their sticks in the air to make sure he didn't get anywhere near them. My father was afraid that his reputation would be ruined if people found out that he'd bought Greg's car. He thought that if he sold it, the new owner would find out about the infamous past owner eventually, and my father's secret would be revealed."

"So how were you getting revenge on your enemy by selling him the car?" Sean said.

"He used to idolise Greg. He actually built a shrine to Greg. Lighting candles and everything. But when he heard Greg's self-penned songs he tore down the shrine and he smashed his entire record collection with a sledge hammer. He didn't have any non-Greg records in his collection because it would have felt like worshipping false gods. I'll wait a few weeks before informing him of the car's past owner. I'll let him get attached to it first. It'll drive him mad."

"What'll he do to the car?"

"Do? I don't know. Polish it, I suppose."

"He won't want to get rid of it or smash it with a sledge hammer?"

"Oh no. When I say it'll drive him mad I mean it'll annoy him for a while. He'll see the funny side after a few hours. It's been a long time since his rejection of Greg."

As they were leaving Mrs. Darcy's house, Hector said to Sean, "So you spend a fortune repairing this car, and you give it to her for free, and then she sells it, probably for a few grand at the very least, and she does it just to annoy someone for a few hours. Who was she really getting revenge on? Was it the man who painted her face on a rock in 1972 or was it you?"

"It was the man who painted her face on a rock in 1972."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I'm one-hundred percent certain."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I just am."

"But why?"

"Because. Because. That's the end of the matter. The car and the curse will never be mentioned again. I'm going home to find that bottle I came across in a washing machine. It looked too tempting to test on a pig first."

The moose's head over the fireplace wouldn't approve of the gardens being open to the public. He enjoys the peace of the place. I have no intention of ever opening the gardens. I couldn't bear the thought of crowds ruining a sunny Sunday afternoon, even though it would be an easy way to make money. The wife's aunt has done very well financially since opening her garden to the public. She saw some beautiful moon orchids in a dream. She re-created the scene in her garden, with limestone for the lunar surface, and orchids made out of paper. Many people come to see it after dark.

Shed Fashion

2010-04-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-21T02:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-14T02:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Easter Eggs

2010-03-31T06:33:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

"There must be something."

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

"Is it about the eggs?"

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

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

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

"Yes."

"And what do you look at?"

"Nothing."

"You might as well tell us the rest."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The horse nodded.

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

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

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

Grumble

2010-03-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

"It is," she said.

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

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

"You never know with days."

"Or weeks."

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

"Do you still have your coconut?"

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

"Can it roll over?"

"Only if you push it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Any situation?"

"Anything at all."

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

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

"Really?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie for a Day

2010-03-17T07:51:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

"When would be a good time?"

"Later. Sometime later. Not now."

"We'll be back later."

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

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

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

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

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

"How are things?"

"Can't complain. And yourself?"

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

"It's... slow."

"I know."

"You know the way."

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

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

Gary took off the hat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Trouble emanating from romantic entanglements?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Couldn't be better."

"Glad to hear it."

"And yourself?"

"I'm struggling on."

"Good."

"Did you ever find that bandage?"

"I did. It was in the piano."

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

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

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

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

"Right. When would be a good time?"

"Later."

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

"Why do you want to shoot me?"

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

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

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

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

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

George's Absence

2010-03-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Really?"

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

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

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

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

Dan's Coat

2010-03-03T02:25:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll walk there with you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professor Cloudbottle

2010-02-24T02:32:00.000-08:00

I found some strange paw prints frozen in the frost on the grass. I'm not allowed mention the wolf in case I frighten people, so I'm definitely not attributing the paw prints to the wolf. The wife's uncle says he knew a man who left strange paw prints everywhere he went. He'd apologise for leaving the prints on a new carpet, but people would question the sincerity of his apology if his tail was wagging at the time.

My cousin Charlie had a friend called Alan, whose father owned a pub. This was the most interesting thing about Alan. It's not that he lived a boring life. He travelled a lot, he once played the part of a monk in a play and he organised a comedy night in his father's pub every Thursday, which would certainly qualify as an interesting thing about Alan, but when he told people about this they always said, "Your father owns a pub?"

Charlie was always in the pub for the comedy night. He loved stand-up comedy, but he hated stand-up comedians. He thought he could do better than them, especially the ones who performed in Alan's father's pub. Their material was terrible, Charlie thought, but they had enough experience of the stand-up circuit to know how to entertain a crowd who were more interested in getting drunk than being entertained. They knew which lines to shout (almost every line) and they knew which lines would be funnier with an F word (again, almost every line). This is why they shouted about going to the effing optician to get an effing eye test so they could get their driving effing licence. Some of them couldn't go to an optician or to a doctor without wetting themselves. "I effing wet myself. I was just thinking, 'Don't effing wet yourself', and I effing wet myself."

One of the comedians who performed in the pub was called Howard P Nothing. He didn't shout, and he didn't use too many F words. He wore a bowler hat, and he had developed a delivery that could get a warm laugh from stone cold lines like 'I spilled soup on my trousers. My girlfriend's parents were there. And her grandmother. They thought I'd wet myself, or worse'.

He got a standing ovation at the end of his act. Charlie refused to stand. He stood to go to the bar, but he thought it was obvious that his stance was in no way related to the ovation. He hated Howard P Nothing more than all of the others because he was equally as bad as them but people thought he was better. One woman said he was a genius.

Alan and Charlie went to a party later that night, and Howard was there too. He was still in his stand-up mode, wearing his bowler hat and telling his bad jokes, and making women laugh. Charlie hated the way he was able to get a sound like that out of a woman. Sounds had often been problematic for Charlie. He'd tried to learn the guitar once and he was never able to get the right sound out of it. Other people could effortlessly produce beautiful music and he could never tell what he was doing wrong. Getting the right sounds out of women proved to be difficult as well. Some men could play them so effortlessly, producing beautiful music. Comedians were always brilliant instrumentalists, and Charlie hated them for this. If another man seduced a beautiful woman with charm, Charlie would take his hat off to him, if he had a hat. He'd buy a hat just to take it off to show his appreciation. But there was something wrong with the way a comedian could seduce a beautiful woman with punch lines like 'I didn't think it was humanly possible, but I effing wet myself again'.

"How can people laugh at that eejit?" Charlie said to Alan. "I've been to funnier funerals."

"So have I, but that's not to say he isn't funny. My grandfather's funeral was hilarious. If it was on TV, they'd have had to put it on after nine o' clock at night."

"He was over-reaching himself when he changed his surname to 'Nothing'."

"Stand-up comedy isn't as easy as it looks."

"If it was as easy as Howard P Nothing makes it look, even people in a coma would be having a go at it. I have all the attributes needed to be a good stand-up comic. I'm not in a coma, and I can tie my own shoe laces without starting a fire."

"There's more to it than that."

"I know there is. I've been studying all the comedians you've booked. There are a few little tricks they use, and a lot of shouting and swearing. And timing. With those guys it's all about timing the F words, but I could do it without any shouting or swearing."

"That woman with the limp didn't laugh at your joke about the greyhound."

"I didn't think she'd be so sensitive about her limp."

"Not everyone would laugh at a joke about a lame, incontinent greyhound anyway."

"It's different when you're on the stage. It's all an act. Howard P Nothing would be an exception. He's just as depressing in real life as he is on the stage. But you've seen yourself -- most of them are just actors."

"If you think you're a good enough actor, I'll give you a slot next week."

"Next week is too soon."

"The week after."

"Okay then."

"I'm looking forward to this."

"So am I."

"I have a feeling that I'm going to be looking forward to it much more than you will."

"I have a feeling that as I spend time working on my act I'll start to look forward to it more and more."

"I'm looking forward to it more now than I was before you said that."

Alan smiled every time he pictured Charlie getting up on the stage. The more Charlie worked on his act, the more he dreaded it. He thought his act was hilarious, but when he imagined himself performing it in front of the audience at the pub, it just didn't sound right.

He tried to stand back and look at the situation objectively. Almost every comedian got this crowd to laugh by shouting and swearing and going for the lowest common denominator. Whereas he, with no experience, would shun all that, appealing to their intellect rather than to whatever it is that makes them laugh at a joke about a flatulent bride.

He started to panic, and he considered going for the lowest common denominator, but his parents would be there. He regretted telling them about it. They'd laugh at comedians who shouted and swore, but not if that comedian was their son. Only his mother was allowed tell stories about how he wet himself.

When Charlie was ordering a round of drinks in the pub one evening he met a woman at the bar. Her name was Karen. Alan was serving at the bar, and he told her about Charlie's gig as a stand-up comic.

When she heard the words 'stand-up comic' she smiled and her whole body language changed, as if she'd just been switched on. Charlie didn't even know there was a switch to turn women on. All along he'd been trying to play an electric guitar and he never knew you had to turn it on first.

He spoke to her for half an hour. He didn't feel a need to be funny when he was talking to her because most of the stand-up comics who performed in the pub were miserable as soon as the gig ended. She said she'd definitely go to his gig, and this added to the pressure. He'd only just found the switch to turn her on. There was a big red button in the middle of her forehead to turn her off, and he didn't think he'd be able to stop his hand reaching out and pressing it.

The pressure was too much for him. He told Alan that he couldn't go through with the gig. "It's just too soon," he said. "Admittedly, it's more difficult than I thought. I don't know if I'll ever have the nerve to go up there on my own."

"You wouldn't have to start on your own. There's a guy called Billy who lives in an apartment over the post office. He's a performance artist, and he's always asking me to give him a slot. I've been a bit reluctant because it's performance art, even though he insists he's made people of every nationality laugh. That doesn't sound very likely to me, but I'd like to give him a chance. He performs under the name 'Professor Cloudbottle'. I'll ask him if he'd be willing to put together something with you."

Billy was very keen on the idea of working with Charlie, but he wouldn't plan it in advance. "It's important that your side of the act should be improvised," he said to Charlie.

"The idea of this was to make it easier for me to go on the stage," Charlie said. "Improvising the act only makes it more difficult."

"Don't worry about it. I'll hold your hand through the whole thing. Not physically. I mean I'll guide you through it. I suppose it would be even more frightening if I actually held your hand."

"Yes."

"You don't have to worry about that. And you don't have to worry about coming up with anything yourself. All you have to do is react to my performance, and it's important that your reactions are real. It should be as new to you as it is to the audience. They'll love it. I've performed this act thousands of times all over the world, and it always goes down well."

"But is it funny?"

"I once gave a woman a hernia because she laughed so much. 'Performance art' isn't the best description of what I do. 'Comedy' would be more appropriate. It's a performance, and there's an element of art, but I only seek to entertain people."

"Okay. As long as I don't have to do anything, I'm up for it."

"The only thing you'll have to do is to introduce me at the start. You'll go on the stage first and say what a privilege it is to be here to introduce the great Professor Cloudbottle."

"Right. I think I can manage that much."

Charlie spent the next few days practising his introductory speech. The only contact he had with Billy before the performance was when they met in the kitchen behind the pub half an hour before they were due to go on-stage. Charlie went through the introduction he'd prepared and Billy said, "It'll knock 'em dead. You can't die in front of a dead audience. I need to go and get ready. I should be like the bride on my wedding day, and you're the groom. You can't see me in my dress. I won't actually be wearing a dress. Don't let the thought of me in a dress trouble you."

"It's the thought that I'm a groom to your bride that's troubling me."

"You'll be fine."

Billy left to get ready. Charlie had a drink to steady his nerves, and he'd only just finished it when Alan told him that Billy was ready. Charlie got up on the stage and he went to the microphone. He got a big round of applause. Most of the people there knew him. He got the impression that they were applauding because one of their own was about to make an idiot of himself purely for their entertainment.

When the applause died down he said, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And, ah, Kevin." Ninety-nine percent of the audience laughed at that. One percent told him to eff off. "It's a great privilege to be here this evening to introduce a man who has quite literally performed in many different countries." He paused, but no one laughed. "He's had academic papers published in the most respected scientific journals. He's lectured at some of the world's most prestigious universities, and his dog once ate a candle." Thankfully this pause was filled with mild laughter to acknowledge that a joke was intended. "We're very lucky to have him here this evening, so please give a warm welcome to Professor Cloudbottle."

Billy appeared on the stage. The audience were surprised when they saw the white face paint and the unitard. Charlie was shocked. This was one occasion when he wanted to shout and swear on the stage. He'd have said something along the lines of this: "He isn't a performance artist at all. He's an effing mime."

Billy's performance was one long pause and none of it was filled with laughter. Instead of trying to get out of an invisible cage, he was trying to get into the invisible cage that Charlie was stuck in. Charlie was glad that Billy was locked out, but this was the one redeeming feature of the act. The audience looked confused. Only Kevin was smiling, and Charlie knew that he was just preparing years worth of insults. Charlie couldn't see Karen at all. She had probably slipped away to avoid the embarrassment of eye contact.

Billy seemed to sense that things weren't going well. His efforts to get into the cage became increasingly half-hearted, and finally he stopped. He stood in the centre of the stage and looked down. He shuffled his feet, scratched the back of his head and said, "I just wet myself."

Everyone laughed, even Kevin. Billy drew the laugh out as far as it would go by pretending to cry. Charlie started inching towards the side of the stage and the audience laughed at that too. Billy looked over at him and nearly collapsed in fake shock. "You weren't trapped at all!" he said.

"I was just... I thought you knew."

"But now you're free! Give me a hug." Billy spread his arms.

"No thanks," Charlie said.

"Why not?"

"Because you just said you wet yourself."

"The only part of me I want to pass on to you is my joy."

Billy moved towards Charlie. Charlie made a move to run past him, but Billy blocked his path. The audience found this hilarious. It seemed as if he really was trapped this time, but he had an idea. If he could have mimed a light bulb coming on over his head he'd have done it, but instead he just mimed closing a door and locking it. Billy tried the imaginary handle, but he couldn't open the door. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll get you out. I'll break the door down."

Billy went to the other end of the stage. He turned around and ran towards Charlie, with his head down. Charlie crouched and put his hands up to protect himself, but Billy hit his head off the imaginary door before he hit Charlie. He staggered backwards and fell. His legs went up in the air and then came to rest on the stage. He lay there, completely motionless, apart from the occasional twitch of his leg. The audience were laughing, but they'd stop laughing soon, and they'd expect Charlie to do something else. He left the stage, and they found this hilarious because it looked as if he was fleeing from the scene.

Billy got to his feet and so did the audience. He dragged Charlie back on the stage so they could both bow and take the applause.

Charlie never thought he'd be shaking the hand of a mime and saying thanks for rescuing him from making a fool of himself in front of friends and family. Billy had made the audience laugh without resorting to shouting or swearing, and yes, one of the few things he said was about wetting himself, but he managed to retain his dignity, despite wearing a unitard at the time.

Charlie met Karen at the bar later that night. "You were brilliant," she said. "I was afraid you'd be just another one of those morons who tell jokes about gay horses, but that was so much better than stand-up comedy."

"There's an element of performance art to it as well."

"I never expected you to be such a good actor. The look on your face when the mime appeared was priceless."

"Yeah. I've been practising that a lot."

"It showed."

She was obviously still switched to 'on', and Charlie couldn't help smiling. There was still a good chance he'd say the wrong thing and press the 'off' button, and he'd end up unplugging her completely in his attempts to switch her back on, but he might just be okay if he let his actions do the talking, like a good mime artist. Actually, he wouldn't fare much better with actions, but if he could say and do as little as possible he'd be fine.

The moose's head over the fireplace spends most of the night watching the Winter Olympics. I think it makes him feel at home. We've had some snow here as well. It didn't stick to the ground this time. This hasn't stopped the neighbours going skiing in the fields, but the type of skiing they enjoy is really just sticking to the ground. It reduces the risk of crashing into a tree. It increases the risk of being caught by the wolf, but there's no chance of that happening. Because there is no wolf.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-18T02:55:00.001-08:00

The roses were a welcome sight in the garden after a cold winter, but they were just there for Valentine's Day. I had to do something to get back into the wife's good books after I broke a vase she made in a pottery class. If I hadn't done it, someone else would have. Not deliberately. The vase was so fragile it couldn't have survived long in the world without being broken. Even looking at it in the wrong way would have cracked it, so it didn't stand much chance when I dropped a portable television on it. Not deliberately.

My uncle Cyril once upset his wife, Joyce, by completely failing to make any reference to Valentine's Day until the day was nearly over. That reference came when he pointed at a picture in the newspaper and he said, "Look at that eejit with the roses."

He could tell that Joyce was angry by the way she glared at him, and he felt guilty. He decided it was time he did something with his wife. As the years go by it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid this conclusion. One alternative is to do nothing, but this isn't always the best course of action, even for men who are terminally lazy. The other alternative is to do something 'about' the wife'. But Cyril wanted to do something with her, to show her that being with her was more than just a legal technicality, that he was in favour of her policies and he was willing to demonstrate his support by turning up for events and accompanying her on public outings. It was something in the form of a public outing he had in mind when he thought of something with her.

He decided to take her out to dinner. He had been to a restaurant called 'The Bucket'. It wouldn't have been appropriate for a romantic dinner in its old guise, but it had been taken over by new owners who had transformed the place. They kept the old sign, and they altered the word 'Bucket' so that it read 'Basket'. The 'The' was erased, and small words were painted in its place. You had to stand close to the sign to read the new name of the restaurant: 'Put all your eggs in one pocket and all your buttons in one Basket'.

Diners in 'The Bucket' used to get an empty plate and their food would be emptied onto it from a bucket. Sometimes they wouldn't get a plate. At least they'd get a lot of food, although some of it would escape unless it was stabbed with a fork. Sometimes they wouldn't get a fork. They'd get a stick, and they could use their knife to whittle it into a spoon, if they got a knife. The menu was written on the back of the waiter's hand. Asking to see it was offering him an invitation to hit you. It didn't matter anyway because everything looked and tasted the same after it had been left stewing in the buckets for a few hours. After the waiter brought you your food, the empty bucket would be left by the table in case your stomach decided that some of its contents didn't qualify as food. Pigs ate in the restaurant. Many people loved the place because they didn't feel a need to observe any table manners while the pigs were eating off the ground. They could even get down on the ground and eat after the pigs had eaten their fill of swill.

Cyril heard that the place was very different under the new ownership. Diners weren't expected to make their own cutlery, and dinners were always brought on plates. The pigs had gone and they'd taken their smell with them. Cyril felt that he was sending an important message to Joyce by taking her to this restaurant after the transformation rather than before. He'd show her that he had a considerate side.

Their dinner succeeded in this regard, but it failed in what Cyril considered to be the primary role of a meal: to satisfy his hunger. The quality of the food had undoubtedly improved since the days of 'The Bucket', but the quantity had diminished. Cyril didn't complain because Joyce was enjoying the evening so much. On the way home they passed an ice cream van that was parked outside a pub. The name of this mobile business was 'Two Monkeys and a Parrot'. The monkeys and the parrot were puppets. These puppets were meant to be a way to attract kids to the van to sell the ice creams and chocolate bars, but drunks coming out of the pubs got more enjoyment from the puppets than the kids did. Cyril always wondered how many people were in the van. Three hands were needed to operate the puppets, so there were at least two members of staff.

He stopped to buy an ice cream and a chocolate bar. A monkey called Bongo got the ice cream from the fridge. He was being subjected to constant abuse from the other monkey, Hilary, and from the parrot, Dolores. Occasionally Bongo got a line in, like 'I said I was sorry', or 'I was busy'.

Joyce got the impression that the hands giving life to Hilary and Dolores belonged to the same person, a woman who was also providing their voices, and that Bongo was voiced by a man who had done something to upset the woman.

"Did he forget about Valentine's Day?" Joyce said.

A man and a woman appeared at the window. "No," the man said.

"Yes," the woman said. "He completely forgot. Again."

"I said I was sorry."

"You always say you're sorry. Your cousin says he's Clint Eastwood, but he isn't."

"He's not claiming that he's the Clint Eastwood."

Joyce was in the mood to act as a peace-maker after her dinner with Cyril. "Why don't ye come back to our place for a coffee and a chat? Maybe we can pass on some of the wisdom we've acquired after a long marriage. Relationships are more important than selling ice creams to drunks coming out of pubs."

Cyril was sure he hadn't acquired any wisdom from years of marriage and the last thing he wanted to be doing was acting as a counsellor for puppeteers, but when they agreed they said they'd drive Cyril and Joyce home in the van. Cyril was much more enthusiastic about being a counsellor then. He ate ice creams and chocolate on the journey home.

The man's name was Eoin and his girlfriend was Susanne. Joyce suggested that Susanne and herself should have coffee in the kitchen while Cyril spoke to Eoin in the living room. Cyril was relieved when he realised that his client didn't feel a need to be counselled.

"We fight like this every few weeks," Eoin said. "I'll do something or forget to do something or forget I've done something and she'll get angry. I'll buy her flowers or chocolates and it'll all blow over."

"Glad to hear it," Cyril said. "Because I don't think I could have told you anything other than 'Buy her flowers or chocolates'. Or 'Take her to a restaurant.' That one worked for me."

"It's annoying when she's angry with me. I can't do anything then. I wanted to go to the bull fight tonight, but that would have upset her more."

"Bull fight?"

"They're not real bulls. It started with a pantomime horse with cardboard horns taped to its head. It wasn't much good as a sport until people realised that it was more entertaining to watch two bulls fight each other. Other animals have been added since then. You can see a giraffe fight a buffalo, or a deer versus a unicorn. It's on now in the field behind the pub where they have the mice races."

"I'd love to see that," Cyril said. "Maybe there's a way we can get out without upsetting what's-her-name."

"Susanne."

"Never forget their names. That's the one piece of wisdom I've acquired from a long marriage."

Cyril went to the kitchen and said to Joyce, "We have to go out to get something," and then he winked.

Joyce put her thumbs up. She assumed they were going to get flowers or chocolates.

Cyril enjoyed the pantomime animal fights. A zebra won the tournament, easily defeating a lion who was hindered by the fact that his rear end seemed inebriated. The first prize was a bottle of wine. The two men who made up the zebra argued about how and when they'd divide the wine. Cyril came up with a solution. He convinced Eoin to buy the wine from them. This would be his present for Susanne.

On the way home, while Cyril was eating another ice cream, he came up with an idea for 'Two Monkeys and a Parrot'. "Why don't ye stage fights between animal puppets," he said to Eoin. "It might not be as entertaining as the pantomime animals, but it could certainly attract more customers."

The wine helped Eoin get back in Susanne's good books, and she was very enthusiastic about the idea of staging fights between the puppets. Eoin was worried that she was too enthusiastic. Was he really back in her good books if she was so keen on attacking his hand with a knife-wielding squirrel?

They attracted many new customers with the staged fights between squirrels, rabbits, badgers and other animals. It helped their relationship as well. They could let out all their tension in these fights. Susanne normally won because she had more tension to let out. Kids loved the fights. It was much better than 'Punch and Judy'.

The moose's head over the fireplace has been contemplating a new painting hanging on the wall opposite the fireplace. It's an abstract piece, mostly blue paint with bits of gold and white thread. It inspired the wife's uncle to ask the question 'What is art?' and to deliver his endless lecture attempting to answer it. The question can have a different meaning for everyone, he says. Some people would find the question as offensive as 'What happened your trousers?' or 'Was that you I saw coming out of Eileen's house at three in the morning?'. Other people would find it as inoffensive as 'Do you take sugar?', and considerably less important. I normally stop paying attention at this point in the lecture. I'll only listen in again when he starts telling his story about meeting Bjorn Borg.

The Ski Ship

2010-02-10T03:04:00.000-08:00

When I was walking around the garden I found a black button on a stone path. It must have been dropped there by a bird. I've noticed that they've been collecting buttons recently. I don't know what they're up to. After months of collecting parts from clocks last summer, they unveiled a machine for predicting the weather. They must have ruined hundreds of clocks, but this destruction served an important purpose. The weather machine isn't always accurate, but it's operation provides an amazing spectacle. Thousands of cogwheels move at once. Brass pistons move wings made of white silk. It's difficult to know what the birds were trying to achieve with these wings, which seemingly serve no purpose. Some people have said that the birds are using the wings to make a statement. Many interpretations of this statement have been put forward, and it's proved to be a source of much debate in the pubs. Other people have claimed that this weather machine is really a way of instigating weather systems rather than predicting them, and that the wings are capable of starting storms. I can't wait to see what they'll do with the buttons.

My cousin Ronan once tried a bungee jump. One of his neighbours, a man called Tim, tied a bungee cord to an old viaduct across a valley. He'd charge local people five euros to plunge towards the river below, springing back up shortly before reaching the cold water, or shortly after if he didn't like them. News of the bungee jumping spread, and people from beyond the locality came to try it.

As the bungee jumping grew in popularity, local businesses did their best to cash in on the influx of visitors. Ronan's girlfriend, Audrey, sold food at a market on Saturday mornings. She started advertising her creations as food that could be eaten while bungee jumping, something to fight hunger on the long journey to and from the river beneath the viaduct. It was meant to be an advertising gimmick, but people took it seriously. They ate her food while jumping, and they found that it greatly enhanced the experience. Her food would have greatly enhanced the experience of standing still as well, or even sitting at a table, but the jumpers never thought of this. They'd buy more of her bread or biscuits or cakes and they'd go on a bungee jump to eat the food.

Some of the regular jumpers were getting fat and Tim was making a fortune because of Audrey. He kept his money under his mattress. When he found that his nose was touching the ceiling he realised that he needed to spend some of his money if he wanted to get a good night's sleep. He decided to go on a skiing holiday. He wanted to reward Audrey for all the customers she'd sent his way, so he brought her and Ronan along with him on the trip. He paid all of their travel expenses.

They found that skiing wasn't as enjoyable as bungee jumping because they kept falling and there was no elastic to pull them back up before they hit the cold snow. They looked for other activities they could partake in on the mountainside.

They saw a ship on top of a peak. It had been adapted so that it could slide down the mountainside. The captain of this ski ship was dressed like a pirate, as were his crew. He needed another three passengers before they could make their voyage to the bottom of the slope, so Tim, Audrey and Ronan agreed to climb on board.

To set sail, the crew used oars to push the ship off the top of the peak. As soon as they began their descent, most of the passengers wished they'd stuck with skiing or snowboarding. It was a terrifying voyage. The sails were used to steer the ship around trees and rocks. The captain's manic smile suggested he was looking forward to a crash. He said, "If we hit a tree, the tree will come off worse. That's not to say we'll get out of the wreck without a scratch."

Somehow they made it to the bottom of the slope in one piece, and the passengers disembarked. The crew emerged with ropes, which they attached to the back of the ship. The captain told his passengers to start pulling the ship back up the mountainside. Most of them started laughing, but their laughter ceased when the crew drew their swords. The captain explained that if they read the small print on their tickets they'd see that pulling the ship back up the mountainside was part of the experience they had paid for, and that it might even be more enjoyable than going down the slope. It was the crew's turn to laugh then.

After pulling the ship for hours, it started to get dark. The captain instructed the crew to anchor the ship for the night. The passengers were herded back on board. They were given tins of baked beans and a tin opener for their dinner. Audrey offered to cook something more appetising, and the captain allowed her to work in the galley. She created a meal that delighted the passengers, the crew and the captain. He sent his first mate out to a shop to buy provisions so Audrey could cook breakfast, lunch and dinner on the following day.

After breakfast, she was allowed stay on board to make lunch while her fellow passengers pulled the ship up the mountain. As she was stirring her vegetable soup she got the impression that the ship was moving quicker. She looked out and she saw that many more people had joined the effort to pull the ship. They had heard about her cooking and they thought that it was worthwhile dragging a ship up a steep slope to get a free lunch made by Audrey. The smell of the soup filled them with enthusiasm.

Lunch went so well that the number of passengers doubled in the afternoon. More provisions were purchased in the shop, and Audrey had to take on assistants to help her cook enough food to feed the growing throng. With all these extra passengers they were able to get the ship to the top of the peak before darkness fell. Dinner was served shortly afterwards. The passengers were very appreciative of the food after a long day of physical labour. They felt that the food was a just reward for their endeavour, and the whole experience proved to be rewarding.

This gave Audrey and Tim an idea for how to deal with the problem of obese bungee jumpers. Instead of dragging jumpers back up to the viaduct, they'd drop them down to a boat in the river. The jumpers would have to climb back up a steep embankment, and when they got to the top they'd be rewarded with some of Audrey's coffee cake or her chocolate biscuits.

The moose's head over the fireplace looks strangely distinguished when he wears his red clown nose. I found it in a box full of clown noses in the attic. These have been there since the days when my grandfather formed a circus with some of his friends to make some extra money. His act was jumping off the roof of a house and landing in a bath full of custard. The danger increased as his act became more popular. The spectators would bring spoons with them. By the time he had climbed onto the roof they'd have eaten all of the custard.

The Beast

2010-02-03T02:19:00.001-08:00

I've been spending more time in the garden, now that the daylight is lasting longer. I stand in the orchard and look at the sky through the bare branches of the trees. Sometimes I'll see my neighbour floating by in her hot air balloon. She'll drop a cake for me to catch. This is how she started delivering her cakes when the roads were too icy to drive on. For an annual subscription she'll deliver a cake once a week, and once every month she'll bring a hamper of jam, honey, bread and cheese. I ended up in hospital the last time I tried to catch that.

My cousin Charlie once spent a few days in the countryside to clear his mind of the stresses and strains he'd been accumulating while working in the city. He stayed in a guesthouse with a beautiful view of a valley. Mrs. Twomey, the owner of the guesthouse, showed him his room on the second floor and she pointed out all the sights he could see from his window. The nearest house was a few hundred yards away. She told him that a magician called Felix lived there.

As they were looking out the window there was an explosion in the shed behind this house, and shortly afterwards, Felix came staggering out of the shed. Charlie and Mrs. Twomey went downstairs and ran to his house.

On the way there, she told him more about Felix. Some people believed that his magical powers came from a pair of leather, fur-lined gloves. There were only two members of 'some people' and they both enjoyed the hobby of burning things made out of plastic. He once performed a trick in a house that was said to be haunted. The ghost had first been sighted over seventy years earlier, when he was seen sleeping on an armchair near the fire in what was described as a 'drunken posture'. There had been numerous sightings since then, including one in which he was blowing up a balloon. The owner of the house thought that the ghost might have inserted part of himself into the balloon, but it was impossible to say which part. The owner was afraid to burst the balloon. Someone suggested that he take it to the woods and just leave it there, but he was afraid that he'd anger the rest of the ghost. He said, "If you had to live with a one-armed man, how would you explain to him that you took his missing arm to the woods and set it free?"

When Felix was performing a card trick for a spellbound audience in a candle-lit room of this house, he stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and looked up. He said, "But I've already started."

Everyone looked up, but there was nothing there. They all assumed he was talking to the ghost. After a pause he said, "Are you sure?... Alright then. I just hope you're right."

The balloon burst shortly afterwards. Screaming ensued, and a lot of people ran from the house. Some of them wanted to burn down Felix's house, and then stand down-wind of the fire in the hope that it contained a lot of plastic.

When Charlie and Mrs. Twomey arrived at Felix's house he reassured them that he wasn't injured, but he seemed a bit dazed. His face was black with soot, and smoke was coming from his shed. He said he was working on a trick in there. He invited them into his house for a cup of tea. They accepted the invitation because they wanted to make sure he was okay.

His dining room was huge but it lacked a table. He had taken it out to make room for the audience who came to see his act every Friday evening. Shelves hid two walls of the room. They were illuminated by the windows on the other walls. Charlie was fascinated by the books on magic, the cloaks and the props, many of them antiques. Felix asked him if he'd like to take on the role of assistant for his next performance in the house on Friday evening. Mrs. Twomey was standing behind Felix. Charlie could see her waving her hands from side to side, shaking her head and mouthing the word 'no'. He wondered what was wrong with her. But he couldn't wonder for long because he had to respond to Felix. He said he'd be delighted to be the assistant. Felix said he'd be performing a trick called The Guillotine.

On their way back to the guesthouse, Mrs. Twomey told Charlie that Felix's last assistant went missing a few weeks earlier. He made her disappear for a trick, but he was supposed to make her re-appear again. This part of the trick didn't go according to plan. When he opened the wooden box in the expectation of seeing Lorraine, his assistant, there was no one there. Shortly afterwards they heard Lorraine's voice. "Where am I?" she said. Felix was unable to answer that question. The audience helped him search the entire house, but they couldn't find her, even though they could hear her voice in many rooms. Felix suggested that she had entered another dimension. She sounded perfectly content there, so no one felt a need to rescue her.

Charlie returned to Felix's house that evening and he asked about the assistant. "It was all just a trick," Felix said. "Lorraine wanted to get away for a few weeks so she could work on her novel without being interrupted. A man called Fintan has been devoting a lot of attention to her recently. He was becoming a bit of a nuisance, and he wasn't recognising any of the hints she was dropping. So we planned this trick. Fintan often calls around to hear her voice, but it's just a recording."

Felix pressed a button underneath a table and they heard a recording of Lorraine saying 'That dog looks just like the dog he's trying to hide behind'.

"She's staying in an abandoned hotel near the woods," Felix said. "Fintan wouldn't go there because it's become a sort of a commune for people who don't use hints when they want to tell you to leave them alone."

Felix took Charlie to the hotel to meet Lorraine. She was staying in a room overlooking the front garden, but she had to remove the pieces of timber covering the window if she wanted to admire the view. She told Charlie about her novel. "All of the characters are based on my toes," she said. She was wearing sandals to reveal her toes. "The big toe on my right foot is a woman who believes that in a past life she was a princess whose favourite hobby was knocking over peasants. The big toe on my left foot is a man who has attracted a large group of followers, all of them dogs. He believes that in a future life he'll be a man who believes that he was Winston Churchill in a past life. I wear sandals so I'll have a constant supply of inspiration. It's been nice to get away from Fintan for a few weeks, but there are other distractions here. I'm writing a film for the people who live in the basement here. They make their own horror films. They were working on a film about man-eating aliens when the beast re-appeared."

"The beast?" Charlie said.

"Haven't you heard of the beast?"

"I'm new to the area."

"He's been appearing on and off in this locality for hundreds of years. Many years might go by without a single sighting and then he'll be seen every night for a few months. He starts fires and he bites the branches off trees. He re-appeared two weeks ago, and he's been back every night since. He has enormous horns that look like branches. He's over eight foot tall, and his eyes are a luminous green. The basement-dwellers abandoned their film about man-eating aliens to make a film about him instead because he looks much scarier than any of their costumes. I have to write the story around what they can film of the beast at night. They're not too keen on the love story I'm writing -- they think I'm just trying to write a part for myself -- but they're very interested in the idea of a character who pushes over peasants."

Lorraine led Felix and Charlie down to the basement to meet the film-makers. A few candles provided the only illumination, but Charlie saw all the faces light up when they heard that he'd be taking part in The Guillotine trick. They asked if they could film it, and Felix said they were more than welcome. Charlie remembered their interest in filming real-life horrors like the beast, and he hoped that this was distinct from their interest in filming The Guillotine.

Felix went home but Charlie stayed with the film-makers so he could go out on their nightly expedition to film the beast. He wanted to see this creature for himself. Lorraine went with them as well.

The beast always emerged from the woods. The film crew patrolled the perimeter of the woods, and they saw him shortly before midnight. The horns on his head reflected the light of the moon. His green eyes turned in their direction, and he started walking towards them. The walk became a run, and their composure evaporated. They ran back to the old hotel. They climbed to a room in the attic, and they tried to film the beast from a window, but they couldn't see him. Charlie returned to Mrs. Twomey's guesthouse at one o' clock.

Fintan called to see him at the guesthouse on the following morning. He said he had heard that Charlie was Felix's new assistant, and he was wondering if he had seen Lorraine when he was in Felix's house. Charlie said he hadn't seen her, but he did hear her comment about the dog hiding behind another dog.

Fintan came up with various interpretations of this remark, all of them involving her desire to see him again. When he had exhausted this topic he started talking about the wildlife around the river. Charlie could understand why Lorraine would want to avoid him. He had a flair for identifying the least interesting aspects of a subject and then discussing them at length, and an inability to discern when his listeners had lost interest.

Charlie went to see Lorraine again that night for another expedition to film the beast. This time they saw the creature starting a bonfire near an old stone bridge. They were able to film him for ten minutes before he saw them and they had to flee.

A huge crowd turned up at Felix's house to see his act on Friday night. Charlie had been hoping that The Guillotine was a card trick, so he was dismayed to see an actual guillotine in the room.

Felix told the audience about how dangerous this trick was and how under no circumstances should they try it at home, assuming they had a guillotine, but he was interrupted by screams from outside. A lot of people were looking in through the windows because they couldn't fit into the room. The beast appeared at one of the windows and he roared. The audience responded with a scream.

But the beast underestimated how many people were interested in seeing Charlie risk his head. The crowd outside the window were able to overpower the beast. The screams became cheers after they had bound his hands and legs. They brought him inside and they put him into the guillotine. Some of them seemed to believe that this device really was as dangerous as Felix said it was.

They were disappointed when the beast's head fell off before the blade fell. Another much smaller head was revealed underneath the head with the horns and the green eyes. It was Fintan.

The audience were engrossed as he told his tale. He came up with his beast costume because he wanted to stop a housing estate being built near the river. He was hoping that the developers would abandon their plans because of a fear that no one would buy a house in a place frequented by a beast. When he saw Charlie and Lorraine with the film crew he thought they were up to something. He became convinced that they were having an affair because Charlie denied ever even meeting Lorraine. So Fintan came to the performance of The Guillotine to scare Charlie away, if the guillotine hadn't already done that job for him.

Just as he finished telling his tale they heard more screams from outside and another beast appeared at the window. The crowd had seen Fintan's realistic beast costume and this beast looked real in comparison. He was taller and his legs were as thick as tree trunks. The ground shook when he moved. Smoke came out of his nostrils. He let out a deafening roar and everyone outside ran away. The people in the room looked for weapons, but they didn't need to use them. The beast disappeared into the night. They heard his pounding footsteps fade to silence.

The appearance of this beast was enough to make the developers scrap their plans for the housing estate. Charlie often wondered if this beast had been Fintan's creation as well. Or perhaps it was one of Felix's tricks. One other possibility was that the beast was real.

Lorraine was enormously impressed by what Fintan had done, and she stopped trying to avoid him. She was given free rein to write the rest of the film about the beast, now that the fake beast had been officially hired as an actor. Fintan excelled in the role. The basement-dwellers gave in to Lorraine's demands to include a love story. She played the part of the beast's love interest. She acted in many more films for the basement-dwellers, and she wrote most of them. Fintan became their costume-designer.

The moose's head over the fireplace was once the assistant in a magic act. He wore a top hat. When the magician lifted the hat, there was a white rabbit on the moose's head. It was meant to be a card trick. The moose liked the feeling of the rabbit on his head, and the rabbit seemed to enjoy being there as well. Whenever the wife's niece brings her pet rabbit, she always puts him on the moose's head. They'll happily spend an afternoon in each other's company.

Ivan's Newspaper

2010-01-27T03:38:00.000-08:00

The coal shed is nearly empty. I noticed some faint drawings on the wall where the pile of coal had been. These drawings seem to be telling the story of an alien landing. It could be the landing of the aliens my grandfather saw one summer night when he was trying to swat away the flies swarming around his head. He became so engrossed in the task that he didn't notice he was walking. By the time the flies had finally got the message, he was miles away from home. He wouldn't have had the courage to go so close to the aliens if he'd seen where he was going. They weren't concerned by his approach. They wouldn't have felt much of a threat from a man who struggled to deal with flies. They asked him to take them to his leader, so he took them to a man known as Biscuit, who lived in a caravan. Three weeks later, the aliens had converted the caravan into a three-storey mansion. My grandfather was sorry he didn't pretend to be the leader, but they might not have believed that after seeing his struggles with the flies.

My cousin Ronan and his friend Shane often saw a man sitting on a stone pillar near Shane's house. There was a beautiful view of the fields from that pillar, but the man was always engrossed in a newspaper, and they noticed that he was always reading the same paper.

One day they offered him a copy of their own newspaper, which they printed on a photocopier. Alien landings often featured in this. The man said, "Thanks for the offer, but I'd rather read this. This is one of Ivan's papers."

"Who's Ivan?" Ronan said.

"Now there's a question that has many answers. Ivan is a man who's well-known for his idiosyncratic views on life. The flow of time enthrals him, filling his senses with a never-ending supply of playthings. Some are taken on board. Some are cast aside to go over the waterfall into oblivion. It's important to stand firm and not be taken over the waterfall. The need to collect new playthings is a good reason to avoid fading away. These diversions for the senses are designed by the family who live in the castle at the source of the stream, or so Ivan claims. He's been inside the castle. He won't say how he managed it, but he left the stream and stood on the bank. This higher ground provided him with a higher vantage point on life. His understanding was deepened. He saw more than he could ever glean while his senses were immersed in an autumn sunset or a star-filled night.

"He followed the stream until he came to the source. The water emerged from underneath a castle. A man was playing croquet on the lawn. He walked over to Ivan and introduced himself as Flaherty. He said, 'I assume you're here about the wine,' and before Ivan had a chance to say anything, Flaherty was leading him into the castle's kitchen to sample the wine.

"In the kitchen, Flaherty's daughter was talking to the cook. The butler poured a glass of wine for Ivan and he tasted it. When Flaherty asked him to guess what it was made of, his daughter interrupted her chat with the cook and said, 'Don't even think of trying to guess what it's made of.' Flaherty considered the matter and decided that his daughter was probably right. He said, 'Come with me and I'll show you something to make you forget all about the wine.'

"He took Ivan to a long corridor to see a statue of a man holding a newspaper as if he was just about to throw it. As they were looking at that, another man walked towards them down the corridor. He was wearing a grey shirt and black jeans. His skin was as white as snow. He had no hair.

"As he got closer, Ivan realised that he didn't have skin at all. Whatever he had, it was moving. It reminded Ivan of people who cover their head in bees for a record attempt or just to pass the time. These white things were smaller than bees and they looked like a permanent fixture on the man's head, if he actually was a man at all. He had the eyes of a man, but he didn't have any ears. His mouth only became visible when he spoke. His name was Ray. Flaherty introduced him to Ivan and they shook hands. Then Ray said to Flaherty, 'Make sure you tell the organist to start playing at midday,' and Flaherty said 'Yes, sir'. Ray said goodbye to Ivan. He turned around and walked back down the corridor. After he had gone, Flaherty said to Ivan, 'He thinks he's the boss around here, and you'll get a lot more peace if you let him think that, but he's not really. Although in fairness, he's come a long way since he started work delivering newspapers.' Ivan noticed that framed newspaper pages were hanging on the walls of the corridor. One headline was about a family of walls taking over a house.

"Flaherty led Ivan back to the castle's door. Before Ivan left, Flaherty shook his hand and said, 'And remember, forget about the wine.' Ivan went back to the stream and returned to the everyday flow of time. He can sit for hours in a cold barren wasteland and be perfectly content, now that he's seen the other side. He doesn't do this on a regular basis, only from time to time. One thing he does do on a regular basis is read newspapers. I've noticed that all of the newspapers he reads feature articles about families of walls. I came across this paper with an article about a family of walls and I've read every word in the entire paper hundreds of times. I get the feeling that somewhere amongst these pages is a way out of the stream, a boat to the water's edge and a chance to find the castle."

Ronan and Shane let the man on the pillar return to his re-reading of the paper. When they were walking down the road on the following day the man was gone, but the newspaper was on top of the pillar.

"Do you think he's found his way out of the stream?" Ronan said.

"Possibly. Maybe he left the newspaper behind for us to find our way out."

"What if we get out and we can't get back in again?"

"Getting in is surely easier than getting out. You can see where you're going when you're going back in. There's no harm in reading the paper anyway."

They started reading Ivan's newspaper and they came across an ad that was circled in red ink. The ad was for the sale of a second-hand robot that had its wedding head switched on. Shane collected and restored antique robots, so there was little chance of him resisting the temptation to investigate further.
The address in the ad led them to a farmhouse on a narrow winding road. They met the farmer in the yard. When they asked him about the robot he said, "Ye're too late. I sold it to a man this morning."

"What did he look like?" Ronan said.

"He was tall. Actually, he was small. Very small. Or very tall. He had a moustache. A beard. In his hand. He had no hair."

"Did he have any ears?"

"I don't know because his thick curly hair covered nearly everything. Now that I think about it, I don't really know what he looked like. That's strange because normally I do know things. Some things. Or nothing. One thing. I know one thing and it's this: he told me about the clouds with bulging eyeballs and they laugh at you and drop things on your head, unwittingly enthralling you with their golden edges in the evening sun. You can go inside to Fay who's trying out her new recipe for pea soup. Peace pervades the atmosphere. Even if you hate the soup you can still feel as if you've been blessed by an authority that's higher than the clouds, and you can go outside and say this to the clouds, but they'll be gone by then."

As Shane and Ronan walked away they spoke about the ghost-hunter they once interviewed for their paper. There were times when he'd stick a pin into his hand to make sure he wasn't dreaming, because sometimes he was dreaming. Ronan and Shane had developed a similar method. Shane would punch Ronan on the arm and Ronan would kick Shane's leg. They tried this as they walked down the road and they agreed they weren't dreaming.

They came across a garden where a woman was trying to coax a man down from a tree. They asked her why he was so reluctant to come down. She said that this morning there was a small red brick wall in her garden and she was sure there had been a pile of bricks there the last time she had looked. She was going to call the police, but there was a good chance they'd arrest her, so she called Lenny instead. He came around, and while he was looking at the wall, a cat appeared behind him. This terrified him, and he climbed up into the tree. He wouldn't come back down.

She told Lenny that the cat had fallen asleep in the shade at the other side of the wall, but this only made him cling even tighter to the branch. She whispered to Ronan and Shane, "I think I'll have to wait for the clouds with the bulging eyes to arrive and frighten him down." The whispering did nothing to ease Lenny's nerves.

Ronan and Shane walked on down the road. There was a man standing in front of the next house. He was reading a newspaper. The headline on the front page was 'More Walls'. The front room of the house behind him was on fire, but he took no notice of this as he read the paper.

Shane asked him if he'd ever heard of Ivan, and the man said, "I am Ivan."

"We've heard a lot about you," Ronan said. "Actually, we haven't heard all that much, but what we have heard is much more interesting than the detailed histories of other people's lives we have to endure. Is it true that you left the stream of time?"

"To put it bluntly, no. It's just a lie I had to tell. I once joined a suburban government. Erasing personal histories was an essential part of being a member. You'd be assigned a role within the government and you'd be expected to lie about your past so you'd fit into the role. I had to make up a story to prove I was qualified to be the Minister of Defence. I used to tell people about the time I conducted a military campaign from the roof of my house. This led to other lies, a long stream of them, culminating in the lie about the castle, a lie that was analogous to the castle in my lie, the source of all the other lies. None of it is real, but in one sense it's all true because within the lie nothing is real when you're immersed in the stream. If you believe the lie, none of this is real, and neither is the lie. The lie is a lie."

"It's not necessarily true either," Ronan said.

"But what is truth?"

"I don't know."

"The castle is the source of truth."

"I thought you lied about that."

"Did I?"

"I don't know. Did you?"

"I don't know. That's why I asked you."

"You said you lied about it."

"Did I?"

"Definitely."

"How do I know you're not lying about that?"

Shane said, "If I were you I wouldn't wait around to see if the fire in your house was real."

"My living room is on fire to keep me warm," Ivan said. "It's been burning down for years. The wallpaper has long gone, and I wasn't sorry to see it go. People have said to me that when the walls have burnt down I'll be colder than ever. As soon as the walls have gone I'll start building them again. I'll start with the wallpaper, which I've already acquired. When that's in place I'll begin pasting the walls to it.

"The fire started when the dog tried to light his pipe. Some dogs start a fire every time they try to light a pipe, so you're better off lighting the pipe for them, even though you might be trying to discourage the habit. Every time I light my dog's pipe I use the occasion to deliver an anti-smoking lecture he wouldn't normally stay around to listen to. When I'm lighting his pipe he stays there for the entire course of the lecture, although he still doesn't listen to a word I say. When he started the fire in my living room I wasn't there to light his pipe. I was in a pub. There are times when you'll go into a pub and something about the bar man's demeanour will make you ask him if everything is okay. Sometimes he'll ask you what 'everything' is and his tone will suggest that everything is not okay. It's best to change the subject to something other than everything. I've learnt this from experience. While the dog was starting the fire, I was listening to a bar man tell me about being at the wedding of the love of his life. She was marrying another man. No one said a word throughout the whole wedding, but somehow words weren't needed. The silence didn't hinder the proceedings. He got the impression that it would have been rude to say anything. When he was given the opportunity to raise his objections to the marriage and express his love for the bride, he said nothing.

"I spent hours listening to him talk about her, and we ended up standing outside her house in the middle of a freezing night. There was a fire in one of the front rooms. I didn't think it was anything to worry about, but he was afraid that he'd get blamed for it. If he put the fire out they'd say he started it deliberately just so he could pretend to be a hero and impress the woman he loved. What are the chances of him arriving there in the middle of the night just as the room was on fire? Quite good if he goes there every night, but he didn't want to tell them that. He could ignore the fire and walk away, but if someone saw him leaving the scene he'd definitely get blamed for it.

"As he was explaining his dilemma to me, an old woman opened an upstairs window and said, 'I'm trying to get some sleep up here.' The bar man realised he had got the wrong house. The love of his life was next door with her new husband. He asked the old woman if she wanted us to put the fire out. She said, 'Put the fire out? In this weather? It would freeze outside. That's why I let it stay in the house instead of sleeping in its kennel. It wouldn't get much protection from the cold out there, even if it hadn't burnt the roof off its kennel.' The bar man told her that we'd be going next door, and she told us to make sure to wake them up because they were always waking her up with their arguments, shouting insults at each other, and throwing things too. The bar man's smile was as bright as the fire after he heard this. Everything was okay again. I went home to find that the dog had started this fire in the living room. I had to pretend to be angry with him. In truth, I was glad of the warmth. I lit his pipe, but I kept the lecture short."

Shane punched Ronan on the arm and Ronan kicked Shane's leg.

They walked on. As they were approaching Shane's house they met a man leading a donkey that pulled a cart. This man had red curly hair and a beard. The cart was full of bottles of red wine. He asked Ronan and Shane if they'd like to buy some of his wine. They saw the ominous clouds appearing on the horizon, and they thought that wine would be just the thing to keep the clouds' menace out of their minds. The bought a bottle each.

When they got to Shane's house they kicked and punched each other one last time before going their separate ways. Ronan went to meet his girlfriend, Audrey. When she saw the bottle of wine she said, "I knew you'd remember our anniversary. Everyone else said you'd forget, because you forgot my birthday. Remember that?"

"No."

"But I knew you wouldn't forget our anniversary."

They drank the wine and Ronan listened carefully to her stories to convince himself that he was immersed in reality. She spoke about a cat she saw who looked as if he wanted to recite a poem he'd composed to express his love for the moon, so things couldn't have been any more normal than that.

Shane chose to escape reality by organising robot weddings.

The moose's head over the fireplace seems perfectly content with the reality of being a moose's head over the fireplace. All he needs is Bach and Beethoven to embellish the flow of time. The wife's aunt has formed more elaborate methods for decorating reality. She's currently reading a physics book to a plastic butterfly.

Apple Blossom

2010-01-20T03:42:00.000-08:00

The cold weather has gone for now. One of its benefits was that it makes average winter weather feel more like summer. The garden gnomes are wearing their summer hats, and they made a small tennis court on the lawn, but I think they're just trying to catch another garden gnome in the net. I hope they do catch him because he's been digging holes in the garden at night. I don't know what he's trying to trap.

My cousin Isobel was shocked to learn that she had been chosen to be the Apple Blossom, the official figurehead of an annual festival to celebrate apples. On the previous year, the woman chosen to fill this role used to spend her spare time shaking. If she kept shaking for long enough she'd start to believe that she was the manager of an international soccer team. It was a different country each time, and this is what stopped her from becoming bored with the experience. Some of the countries didn't actually exist. For hours or even days after she stopped shaking she'd feel the thrill of qualifying for the World Cup with a country where people lived in clocks. For most of the Apple Festival she kept talking about managing Ecuador's national team.

Isobel was chosen as Apple Blossom because the Apple Committee had been secretly observing young women (something they only do for professional reasons) and she hadn't shaken once. In fact, she sat still for long periods of time as she observed Mars through her telescope. They had narrowed their search down to two candidates, but the other one started shaking after she saw some men with binoculars and cameras hiding in the tree outside her bedroom window.

Isobel didn't want the role. She was too busy observing Mars at night, and writing about her observations by day (she was convinced that something funny was going on up there on Mars). She decided to hide before she was presented with the official cudgel for trashing anyone found guilty of disparaging an apple, unless that apple had been found guilty of something that merited its denigration. If they couldn't find her, members of the Apple Committee would give the cudgel to someone else, someone who could afford to waste time learning the song they'd sing to encourage academics to write more books about apples.

She decided to spend the weekend at her grandmother's house. She'd get a chance to observe Mars and she'd help her grandmother catch the mouse who had the brain of a monkey. Isobel had seen this creature once before. It looked like a normal mouse, but it had something taped to the top of its head. Isobel's grandmother believed that this thing was a monkey's brain and that the mouse was using it, just like the engine on the roof of her neighbour's car made the car go faster and catch fire. Isobel thought the brain was made out of plastic and that it was providing the mouse with no additional cognitive benefits, but one thing she couldn't deny was that this mouse was much smarter than his comrades. He was extremely good at not getting caught, despite being hindered by a strange plastic brain-like object taped to the top of his head. This led Isobel to believe that he had a good reason for wearing it, perhaps to confuse Lilly, the cat, who seemed very wary of the mouse. She'd pretend to be asleep rather than try to catch her foe. Isobel's grandmother had been trying to catch him for years. It was a great hobby. She got a lot of exercise and it kept her mind active. Sometimes she built elaborate traps and sometimes she used devious ruses involving actors and scripts that were over fifty pages long.

When Isobel went to the house to avoid the Apple Committee, her grandmother was trying to catch the mouse with a miniature village created with doll's houses. One of her sisters made the doll's houses (this was her hobby). Isobel's grandmother believed that the strangeness of the village would weaken the mouse's mental fortitude. Isobel helped by wearing a long white dress and playing a lute. She completely forgot about her role as Apple Blossom, but late in the afternoon she looked out the window and she saw members of the Apple Committee walking up the garden path. One of them was holding the cudgel. As soon as that was presented to her she'd be stuck with the role. They saw her through the window, so she couldn't get her grandmother to pretend that she wasn't there. She decided to leave through the back door and run away.

When they saw her through the window they must have recognised the expression of an unwilling Apple Blossom, a potential runner. One of them went around the side of the house. She heard him say, "She's getting away."

They chased her through the fields. The long dress was slowing her down, and the lute wasn't exactly helping either. When she came to a pond she noticed that there was only one boat tied to a small pier. She climbed into this and she rowed to the centre of the pond, where the Apple Committee couldn't reach her. But they paid some kids to borrow a raft, and two of them used pieces of timber as paddles to make their way towards her.

They might have caught her if one of them hadn't remembered that he was afraid of water when it came in large quantities. He started shaking, and so did the raft. The two committee members fell into the water. Isobel felt that she had a duty to rescue them. She rowed to where they were splashing about in the water and she helped them into the boat. The cudgel was still floating in the water. They insisted that she retrieve this, but she rowed back to the pier. On the way she tried to start a conversation with the man who had started shaking. She said, "What international soccer team are you managing these days?" He didn't respond.

After they had returned to dry land, the head of the committee said, "We'll get the cudgel. If necessary we'll use the backup cudgel, and we'll track you down eventually. There's no getting out of it."

"Ye only have another two days to track me down. I know of some very comfortable holes I could hide in for two days and ye'd never find me."

They looked concerned, and she knew she'd won.

"Ye'll have to get someone else," she said. "Ye're focussing too much on finding someone who doesn't shake. Ye should be looking for someone who actually wants the role. Not everyone is going to be distracted by her duties to a South American soccer team. What ye need is someone who'll devote all of her attentions to the role."

"I suppose we should go and get our binoculars and our cameras," the head of the committee said.

"Ye don't need to spy on anyone," Isobel said. "Talk to women." They seemed very dubious about this idea, but she persisted. "Ask them questions like 'Do you want to be the Apple Blossom?', or 'Do you have a job in international sport that could impair your ability to satisfactorily perform your duties as Apple Blossom?'."

They agreed to try her approach, after she had promised to help them. They began the interviews that evening. She asked most of the questions, and it only took them a few hours to find the ideal candidate. Janet was chosen to fill the role, and she went on to be one of the best Apple Blossoms ever. Her shaking was barely noticeable, but her enthusiasm for apples was there for all to see. Her skill with the cudgel could make the crowd gasp in astonishment.

The moose's head over the fireplace has stopped wearing his antler warmers. He didn't really need them during the cold weather, but they looked good. They were made by one of our neighbours, Rose. She's used to making strange items of clothing. She spends a lot of time making pyjamas for salmon. She still hasn't managed to convince salmon to wear them. She puts them on salmon mannequins and she displays them on the river bank, but the fish have shown little interest so far.

The Funereal King

2010-01-13T01:48:00.000-08:00

It snowed for most of the day on Sunday. Snowmen were appearing all over the place. The wife's aunt was convinced that they were going to form an army and take over houses, forcing people to stay outside with lumps of coal for eyes. That's why she sang in the rain when it arrived to thwart their plan.

My cousin Gary considers himself to be lucky. The one time he fell off a cliff, he landed in the back of a truck full of rotten pears. His attitude to life changed after this near-miss. He was determined to live each day to the fullest, and to try new things.

He soon realised that he couldn't try everything. His friends urged him to take up hobbies such as wrestling or bird-watching or bird-wrestling. One of his friends, Fergus, had a hobby that amounted to hiding lamb chops in snowmen while an accomplice danced to distract a dog. None of these activities appealed to Gary.

He was intrigued when he heard about Fergus's great-uncle Slate, who used to spend most of his time making musical instruments out of copper pipes, wool and paper. Some of the instruments were electric, but even Slate himself was afraid of touching them. Gary went to see him to find out more. Slate told him about the gypsies who could make beautiful music come out of the pipes. They could make lots of things come out. One of them could blow into an instrument and hundreds of spiders would emerge. These spiders would rise into the sky and disperse like smoke. The gypsies bought some of his instruments and they travelled all around Europe, playing concerts in castles, huts, holes, public houses, forests and caravans, anywhere they could find an audience who wouldn't run away screaming at a stream of spiders. The gypsies sent regular letters to Slate.

Gary was inspired to start making his own instruments. He used parts of old washing machines, bits of furniture that had been smashed to pieces (by Gary), brass taps, spoons and other bits of junk he found. He focussed entirely on the look of his instruments, rather than the sound. He became engrossed in this work. Entire evenings would vanish as he assembled the bits of junk in the shed. He realised that this was far from the idea he had when he set out to live life to the fullest, but he couldn't think of anything else he'd be happier doing.

He was delighted with his creations. He showed them off to anyone willing to look at them, and most people were impressed. A woman called Martha believed he was an artist, and a good one at that. She bought one of his instruments, and she invited him to a party at which the instrument would be played by The Funereal King.

The Funereal King used to be in a band called 'The Funereal Kings'. He was the lead singer and he played the violin. There were seventeen people in the band, but the others left one by one over a six-month period. Some left because they couldn't get on with someone else in the band, and then the person they couldn't get on with would leave because they'd be bored without anyone to fight with. One woman left to sell ham sandwiches made from an ancient recipe.

The Funereal King looked behind him one day and he realised that no one was there. He was sure that there had been people there before. He wondered where they'd all gone to. He waited around, but they didn't come back. He couldn't remember his name, so he became known as The Funereal King and he tried to keep the band going, but the music seemed empty without the sound of trumpets, lutes and people fighting over sandwiches. He learnt other instruments and he started fighting with himself, but he couldn't do everything all at once. To fit as much as possible into a performance, he joined some instruments together and he wrote songs full of insults against himself. It was always worth going to his gigs to see him attempting to play one of his bizarre instruments. Sometimes it looked as if he might kill himself playing an instrument, and the self-hatred in the songs suggested that this was his intention.

He seemed like the perfect person to play the instrument recently purchased by Martha. Gary was afraid that it would sound terrible, and that Martha wouldn't want it anymore. A big crowd gathered around The Funereal King as he got ready to perform at the party. Gary stood near the door so he could make a quick getaway if needed.

The Funereal King's first attempt to play it failed. He blew into the mouth piece, but no sound came out the other end. He took a deep breath and tried again, but he still couldn't get it to produce a sound. He made a third attempt, blowing as hard has he could. His face went red, and Gary was afraid that he'd pass out. This attempt failed as well. After The Funereal King had rested for a few minutes he tried inhaling from the instrument instead of blowing into it. The sound of coughing followed as The Funereal King fell to his knees. Gary was just about to leave, but The Funereal King sprang to his feet. There was a look of joy on his face. He said, "There's a shimmering wonder to everything. Everything is stitched together to create a universal glow. The sunlight on the concrete. The shadow cast by the evenly-cut hedge. The Polish men who cut the hedge. They've finished their dinner now. They're joyfully appreciating the taste of their coffee. Or joylessly. Crushed by the rejection of someone prone to throwing shoes at mirrors in fits of rage. The design in the curtains was conceived in the head of someone thinking of sea urchins, creatures filmed for a nature documentary by a man with a fear of spiders. The sea urchins are caught on camera as they think of picking the divers' pockets while cuttlefish distract the divers with offers to shine their shoes.

"Live in each moment. Explore the many layers of each moment. Dance its dance. You can try re-living it when it's past, holding it up for examination, like a costume in tatters after a fancy dress party, but you can't step inside it again. There may be a need to escape into the past to get away from the present, but very often there are plenty of escape routes in the present. 'Escape' is probably the wrong word. Or else it's the right word but it doesn't present the most promising facade. A re-appraisal of the word is needed, to paint its walls and highlight its finest architectural features. Escape can be a beautiful thing. Like escape from a prison. Obviously it isn't beautiful when a murderer escapes from prison. I'm talking about mental prisons, mindsets that exclude most of reality and make the tiny sliver we see seem more important than it actually is..."

He spent the next hours passing on the truths that had just been revealed to him. When his energy started to fade he inhaled from the instrument again and he was rejuvenated. He kept talking until after midnight, and the guests at the party were entranced.

Martha agreed to let him use the instrument at gigs, and he developed a following who loved to hear his long dissertations after inhaling from the instrument. His former band mates re-joined the band one by one. They never told him they were coming back. They used to sneak in behind him at gigs, and they'd try to stay quiet so he wouldn't notice. The original line-up had been restored by the time he finally turned around. He seemed slightly surprised to see them there, but he didn't ask any questions. He just inhaled and started talking about getting a haircut in New York.

Gary attracted an unwelcome following who wanted to know what he put into the instrument. He insisted that he hadn't put anything into it, that it was all in The Funereal King's mind, but they didn't believe him. They followed him everywhere he went. Some of them waited outside his house all night long. He started to have nightmares about zombies chasing him until he comes to a cliff, but there's no truck full of rotten pears below.

After a few days of being harassed by his followers, his nerves were shattered. He was seriously considering leaving the country for a while. But The Funereal King rescued him by blowing instead of inhaling at one gig. The instrument created a terrible sound. No one wanted to know what was in it after this, and Gary's followers abandoned him. The Funereal King, or The Funereal Kings, kept their following, partly because people were entertained by the fights that took place behind the lead singer as he performed.

The moose's head over the fireplace wasn't concerned about snowmen taking over the house. The roaring fire beneath him would have protected him against the most hostile being made out of snow. The wife's uncle has no fear of an army of snowmen, but he does believe that scarecrows could be a threat if they ever got together.

A Dream Day

2010-01-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

The cold weather seems determined to last longer than the wet weather that preceded it. I've been doing my best to feed the birds in the garden, but the partridge in the pear tree is giving me malevolent looks.

My cousin Jane and her best friend, Claudia, were walking down a quiet country road one day when a dog ran past them. He had something in his mouth. A few seconds later a group of over twenty people ran by, chasing the dog. One of them told Jane and Claudia that the dog had taken a diamond necklace. Jane and Claudia joined the chase because it looked like fun.

The dog led them through fields and down narrow lanes. More people joined the chase. Claudia was enjoying it, but Jane was becoming increasingly concerned. It reminded her of a dream she had. The dream started with a fancy dress party at a house in the country. Jane went to the party as a tree. The people who had come as kitchen utensils were congregating in a corner of the kitchen. A nurse was giving first-aid to aliens. In the dream it didn't matter if she was a real nurse or if they were real aliens. The gorilla in the drawing room was probably just someone inhabiting a costume because he was holding a cocktail and telling someone about the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon was with the other guests, dancing to records played on an old gramophone. A dog with a gold watch in his mouth ran around the room. He was closely followed by a man dressed as a penguin. Everyone joined the chase because it looked like fun. They followed the dog outside. He led them through the moonlit fields, and their laughter never stopped until they arrived at the ruins of a castle, where they were confronted by a terrifying hound who was surrounded by people who looked even more vicious than he did.

She had seen the hound at the castle in a horror film. In the film, a woman had followed her dog to the ruins, and there she had seen the hound and his intimidating handlers. They took the woman into the dungeon, where they performed a Satanic ceremony. The film wasn't very realistic. Jane had found it funny rather than frightening, but her nightmare augmented the menace and she woke up screaming when she saw the hound in her head.

As she ran after the dog with the necklace she wondered if her dream had been a premonition. She had a sense of something bad ahead. Or was this just a dream? She didn't recognise her surroundings, and she felt an air of unreality. The sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze seemed eerie. A young girl kept rising over the top of a hedge and disappearing beneath it again. The cause of this could have been a trampoline, but Jane had a feeling that it was due to some sinister device that projected children into the air against their will.

Jane stopped running in the middle of a field when a woman asked her what type of sleep she wore. Claudia stopped as well. "What's wrong?" she said.

"I don't know," Jane said. "But something is definitely wrong."

After the dog and the chasing pack disappeared over the top of a hill, Claudia said, "Do you have any idea where we are?"

"No. We're lost. That's one thing I know is wrong."

They walked to the edge of the field. At the other side of the ditch was a narrow road lined with trees. They walked down the road until they came to a woman who was sitting on a suitcase and crying. Jane asked her what was wrong and she said, "Nothing's wrong. I can cry!"

"Right. Congratulations."

"Thanks. For decades I was unable to cry, but thanks to a psychiatrist I've regained the ability. Now I cry as often as possible to make up for lost time. I cry in happiness at being able to cry."

She told them that her suitcase was full of broken vases. They were broken before she put them into the suitcase. She was very keen to emphasise this point. She wouldn't want people thinking that she was careless with vases in her suitcase, but she didn't mind them thinking that she travelled with broken vases, and that she was very careful with the broken pieces.

Claudia said, "We really need to go now. We have to be... somewhere else. Goodbye."

Claudia walked away. Jane said goodbye and followed her. Claudia said, "Something is definitely wrong alright. I have a recurring dream in which a woman ferociously beats a rug that's hanging outside the back door of a house. That woman is my grandmother. She always frightened me, and not just because of the way she beat rugs. She exuded an aura that was strong enough to touch, if you were stupid enough to touch it. My brother used to do impressions of her, despite a fear that part of her aura had left her and had seeped in under the door to see what we were up to. He enjoys experiencing fear, as long as the feeling isn't too intense. He saw her ghost after she died. Or maybe it was just her aura. Either way, it was too much fear for him.

"In my dream I try to give as wide a berth as possible to the woman beating the rug. I go in through the back door. I meet a nice old woman in a kitchen with vases, teacups, saucers and plates on the shelves. She offers me some tea, and when I say I'd like a cup she turns into my grandmother and she starts ferociously beating the things on the shelves with a stick, smashing everything to pieces. I had a feeling that the woman we just met was getting ready to turn into my grandmother."

They walked on quickly.

"So whose dream is it?" Jane said.

"If you've dragged me into one of your dreams I'll be really annoyed."

"If it's my dream you don't need to worry about anything. You're safe and well somewhere else."

"So are you, if it's just a dream. You're in bed, or else you're pretending to listen to your brother talk about his latest fishing trip."

"I don't feel safe and well."

"Neither do I."

Safety seemed a long way away when a huge dog came running around a corner, followed by a group of dishevelled people who looked as if they'd just been dragged through the undergrowth in a forest.

Jane screamed. The dog was baring terrifying teeth that glinted in the sun, but just before he reached Jane and Claudia he dropped some of his teeth. He jumped up on Jane and started licking her face. Claudia noticed that the teeth on the ground were actually diamonds.

The woman who owned the necklace gave them fifty euros each as a reward. They went to a cafe for coffee and cheesecake to convince themselves that they weren't dreaming. Dogs stared at them through the window of the cafe, but there was nothing unusual in that.

The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed our New Year's Eve fancy dress party. Two people came as Sylvester Stallone from Rocky. They were frozen when they arrived in their boxing shorts, but at least their hands were warm in the gloves. It was no surprise when they had a fight, but no one would have predicted that the source of their dispute would be a peanut.

The Baker

2009-12-30T05:50:00.000-08:00

We had a white Christmas this year. The snow didn't last for long on Christmas Day before the rain arrived and left us with ice, but it was a very white Christmas Eve. The garden gnomes made their own snow people and arranged them in a scene. It looks like a bank raid gone wrong.

My aunt Bridget used to visit a local baker called Des at least twice a week. When he announced that he was closing down his business it was a sad day for all concerned, for Des and his customers. All concerned would have fitted into the small baker's shop at the same time, and they did at five o' clock on Des's final day. Almost all of his customers were dedicated ones. Having numerous uncaring customers was more profitable than securing a handful of ardent followers who'd tell all their friends and relations about Des's incomparable cakes, but it wasn't as fulfilling. This is what had made the struggle with his finances worthwhile for so long. Either his customers didn't have many friends and relations or his creations only appealed to a certain type of person, someone capable of appreciating the peculiar character of a cake and recognising its superiority to the mass-produced, character-less clones in supermarkets, and willing to pay more for it. He reached the stage where the benefits of an early retirement seemed greater than the satisfaction he got from his job, and he announced his decision to close his bakery.

His customers were disturbed. They all tried to convince him to change his mind. Many of them promised to eat more cakes, even vowing to become obese to save his business. But his mind was made up. He was looking forward to his retirement because he'd finally get a chance to start the vegetable garden he'd been planning for years. He'd be able to visit his sister in Scotland and his brother in a tree.

After his customers had accepted his decision, their thoughts turned to expressing their gratitude for the countless delights he'd provided over the years. Bridget organised a meeting in her house to discuss what they'd do for him. They agreed to surprise him with a party in his shop on his final day, and they'd buy him a present to mark the occasion. When someone suggested giving him a cake, the room went quiet. A party wouldn't be a party without a cake, and it wouldn't be a good party without a cake made by Des, but you couldn't get the guest of honour to make his own cake. They could make a cake themselves to show how much they cared, but anything they made would shrivel with an overwhelming sense of inferiority when it was revealed in Des's shop.

The silence was broken by a man called Jeff, who stood up and said, "We could always get someone else to make the cake, someone who'd do a much better job than we could. A neighbour of mine, Laurence, is supposed to be an outstanding baker. I've heard people swear by him. I've heard people swear at him too. He's a funny sort of fellow. A bit eccentric. Sometimes he angers people by picking flowers from their gardens or asking them if they're wearing a wig. He doesn't do these things in a malicious way. He just doesn't think. He'd chance anything without thinking. You can order a cake from him and he'll make it in his kitchen. I was thinking about getting him to make a birthday cake for my mother after hearing some great things about him. I wanted to suss him out a bit more first, so I called around to his house. I told him I was interested in finding out more about the windows he had fitted because I was thinking of getting new windows myself. He was very friendly. He gave me a tour of his house, or at least he started to. It was the strangest house I've ever seen. That's what I was saying to myself after seeing the cobble stones around the fireplace in the dining room. And then we came to the study. All four walls were hidden behind shelves. The shelves on one wall were filled with glass jars and in each jar was a single spider. At first glance it was difficult to tell if the spiders were living or dead. One glance was one more than enough for me. Having said that, I'd rather stay with the spiders than take my chances in the room where he kept the hair, which he promised to show me after the study. Fortunately there was another option. I told him I had to go and see a man about a boil, which was true. I decided not to get him to make my mother's birthday cake. But I still hear great things about his skills."

"I've heard of him as well," Bridget said. "People have told me he's just as good as Des. Loyalty to Des prevented me from ever sampling any of Laurence's work, but I suppose now is a good time to start. We do have to think about life after Des... So what became of the boil?"

"It was hastily dispatched. But sitting down can still be uncomfortable. I wouldn't have made this suggestion if I hadn't wanted to stand up, because I don't think it's a very good suggestion. I still can't stop thinking of those spiders and wondering how bad the hair room could be."

"I think we should give him a chance," Bridget said. "We'll get him to make two cakes. We'll eat one ourselves and if it's good enough we'll give the other one to Des."

Laurence's cakes were more than good enough. Bridget and the other customers presented one of them to Des in his shop on his final day, along with a gift of a silver pen. He was touched by their affection for him. When he asked where they got the cake, Bridget just winked and said, "Maybe we made it ourselves."

All eyes were on Des as he tasted the cake. The customers were expecting to see a look of pleasant surprise, but instead they saw anger in his eyes. "He made this," he said.

"Who?" Bridget said.

"Laurence."

"Oh. Ah... Yes. Is that a problem?"

"Please remove this cake from my shop."

"We're terribly sorry. We didn't mean any offence. We just thought it would be nice to have a cake worthy of the occasion."

After Bridget and the other customers had convinced him that they had no idea he'd have a problem with a cake made by Laurence, he explained the reason for his anger. "I taught Laurence everything he knows," he said. "Twenty years ago, when the business was going well, I took him on as an apprentice. He had talent -- there's no doubt about that -- but he couldn't be tamed. He kept coming up with outlandish designs, like a cake in the shape of a shepherd who's just been given permission to perform an operation on his brother. He added expletives to the messages on top of birthday cakes. He said that ten-year-olds would love to see a message like that on their birthday. He might have been right about that, but it was still wrong. He was damaging my reputation, so I had to let him go.

"He set up his own bakery. He was funded by a rich cousin called Steve whose hobby was buying expensive sports cars and crashing them into holes. Digging enormous holes was another hobby. Because of his money, Laurence didn't have to worry about making a profit. His cakes were much cheaper than mine. People didn't seem to care that the cakes were swearing at them, as long as the price was right. You could say that about the cakes in the supermarket. All sorts of supermarket food jeers and swears at people as they put these things in their trolley. Laurence's cakes had real quality as well, at least in terms of taste, if not looks. My business was on the point of collapse and he didn't give a damn. I was only saved because Steve was arrested for fraud and his assets were frozen. Other charges followed, such as vandalising public gardens by digging holes and building a wizard's house. Steve insisted that there was nothing to worry about. His plan was to dig a hole and escape from prison, but it never came to fruition. Laurence's business went bust instead of mine. He didn't seem to give a damn about that either. I haven't spoken to him since."

Bridget and the other customers felt awful about the way they had ruined Des's final day. The only way to make up for what had happened was to repair relations between Des and Laurence. Laurence was only too happy to offer an olive branch. He would have been only too happy to do almost anything they suggested, as long as it didn't involve losing any of his hair. He made a cake for Des. In the icing on top he wrote a message expressing his admiration for Des and gratitude for the skills his teacher had imparted. He managed to fit many heartfelt sentiments into the top of the cake, and an extraordinary amount of expletives.

Des accepted Laurence's apology and his cake. They spoke about Des's plans for his retirement. Laurence already had a vegetable garden, and he was able to help Des with his. Laurence grew vegetables in his own idiosyncratic way. He made hundreds of tiny scarecrows. Some of them were made entirely out of hair. They didn't have much of an effect on the crows but they kept most people away.

The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to our fancy dress party on New Year's Eve. He's going as Laurel and Hardy. Not that he's going anywhere. He's staying as Laurel and Hardy. There isn't much more to his costume than two hats hanging off his antlers, and yet no one ever confuses him for a hat stand. People immediately recognise who he's meant to be. My Popeye costume is very detailed, but people often mistake me for a leprechaun. This also happens when I'm not wearing my Popeye costume.

Rudolf the Wolf

2009-12-23T02:17:00.000-08:00

The garden has been looking like an image from a Christmas card recently. Snow, frost and ice have been prominent features of the past few days. People can go sledding on the hills or ice-skating in the fields still submerged after the floods. The wife's aunt can glide gracefully across the ice, even though her enormous hat looks as if it's constantly on the verge of collapse. It's covered in holly, tinsel, lights and an angel smoking a pipe on top.

My cousin Isobel joins a group of carol singers every year. They perform in halls, on streets and on doorsteps in the week leading up to Christmas. Members of the group don't need to be good singers but they do need a flair for making extraordinary hats. To audition for the group you have to wear your best hat. You can sing as well, if you want to. The audience don't mind how badly the group sound because they're too distracted by the headgear. Isobel's hat has a banjo in it. It's possible to play the banjo, but not while she's wearing it.

One year a man called Clive became a member with a top hat that had a stuffed penguin on top. He never sang because he believed that silence would enhance the effect created by his hat. The penguin proved to be popular with the audience. The singers drew a big crowd when they performed in the town's square on a Saturday afternoon, even though there were many other distractions in the town at that time. One popular event taking place that day was the annual smelling contest. The event was first staged many years earlier, when it was meant to be a spelling contest for kids, but someone misspelled 'spelling' on the poster advertising it. The locals were much more interested in smelling than spelling. It became an annual event, and it was opened to people of all ages. Contestants wore blindfolds and they had to guess what they were smelling. In the later rounds of the competition, contestants would be expected to identify ten different items that were put together in a bucket. The buckets could contain food, flowers, tools, batteries, socks, Christmas decorations or just about anything that would fit into the bucket. The best smellers practised all year long, and they were able to guess the titles of books based on smell.

A few days before Christmas, the carol singers started visiting houses. When they came to the home of the winner of the smelling contest, a man called Brendan, they congratulated him on his success before performing 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. He seemed preoccupied with a smell as they sang or stood still. At the end of the carol he looked at Clive and said, "Why is there a turtle in your hat? Or is it in the penguin?"

Clive remained silent. After they had left Brendan's house, the leader of the group proposed a motion to expel Clive for concealing something in his hat that was inappropriate for carolling. They had a brief debate on the issue. Isobel contended that the turtle was perfectly appropriate for carolling, and even enhanced the hat. She put forward a very strong case, but when they voted on the motion, Clive lost by one vote. Before leaving, he leant forward and let his penguin glare at those who had voted against him.

On the following day, Clive got a visit from Isobel and JJ, another member of the group who had supported him. JJ was the only member who didn't have to wear a hat because any headgear would have diminished the effect of his hair, which was as impressive as any hat. It looked as if his head was full of antennae, and he claimed he could receive channels through these antennae. They provided visions of the future. His most recent vision was of Clive delivering Christmas gifts late at night, leaving these gifts on doorsteps.

"It all makes perfect sense," Isobel said to Clive. "You give gifts to the people who voted against you and they'll let you back in. You should probably give gifts to the people who voted for you as well because you don't want to upset them."

"That's a fantastic idea," Clive said. "Or nearly a fantastic idea. I'll give gifts to the people who voted against me, and my gifts will definitely upset them. That vision was of me getting revenge. I've been trying to come up with a plan for revenge since last night, and this is perfect. I'll give them something nice that's covered in earthworms."

Clive was afraid of earthworms but he had no fear of knives. He'd never been injured by an earthworm but he'd need both hands if he wanted to count on his fingers the amount of times he was rushed to hospital because of an accident with a knife, and two hands wouldn't be sufficient if he hadn't been able to reach the surgeons with the skills to re-attach his fingers. He was going to get his brother to collect the earthworms that he'd give to the carol singers who had voted against him. His brother loved knives and earthworms.

Isobel said, "I'm sure JJ's vision wasn't of you getting revenge."

JJ thought about this. He said, "The smile on your face suggests you're trying to please people rather than upset them."

"The smile on my face suggests that I'm very pleased to be upsetting people."

"That's your interpretation of JJ's vision," Isobel said, "and it's very dangerous for anyone but JJ to interpret his visions. Last year a man called Peter was in our group. JJ had a vision of him being attacked by old women unless he abandoned plans for a hamster cannon. Peter said, 'I met a hair dresser who claimed to have a little birdcage in her ears and there was a tiny bird in the cage. Her ear rings looked like bird cages that had been pulled apart. The little bird told her things that triggered visions in her head. She told me about a modified washing machine that you can put your head into and when you take it out a few minutes later you'll have an amazing hair style. She said that if I put my head into this I'd get a huge hairstyle that seagulls are trying to escape from, and I'd be wondering if the seagulls were going to die, but if I didn't put my head into the machine everything would be fine, no matter how many hamster cannon I build.' He was being sarcastic. And do you know what happened to him?"

"What?"

"Exactly what JJ said would happen, and on top of that, mice set up home in his hat."

"Okay. I'll do what JJ saw me doing. I'll deliver Christmas gifts tonight."

Isobel suspected that Clive was going to add earthworms to these gifts, so she prepared alternative earthworm-free gifts for the people who had voted against him. She'd leave them on doorsteps in place of Clive's gifts, if Clive's gifts were designed to upset people. To determine if his gifts contained earthworms, she got Brendan to help her. They waited in a car near the house where the leader of the group lived. They saw Clive leaving a small box on the doorstep. The box was wrapped in Christmas paper, and it came with a card signed by Clive. He certainly looked pleased.

After he had gone, Isobel and Brendan went to the door. Brendan smelled the box and he was easily able to identify the smell of chocolates and earthworms.

"I knew it," Isobel said. "I'm tempted to leave the earthworms here so he'll never be let back into the group. But I like him. And his penguin. I love his penguin."

She had brought a box of chocolates that didn't contain any earthworms. She left this on the doorstep and took Clive's present away. As they were walking back towards the car they saw what looked like a dog walking towards them, but then Brendan noticed the eyes and he said, "Oh no! It's Rudolf! He actually exists!"

Isobel had often heard the legend of the wolf who prowls the streets of the town around Christmas. There was a red glow to his eyes, and that's why he was known as Rudolf. Isobel had stopped believing in him years earlier. The idea of a wolf with red eyes seemed outlandish enough, and the legend was made to sound even more far-fetched by tales of Rudolf howling to the music played by a woman with a glass harp.

"I hope he doesn't think we're stealing Santa's gifts," Isobel said. "Why didn't JJ tell me this would happen?"

Her phone rang. It was JJ. "I've just had an amazing vision of your future," he said. "In it, you've just discovered a shop that sells teabags. Nothing but teabags."

"That isn't really of any help to me right now. We're having trouble with Rudolf, the wolf. He's real, and he's walking towards us. Not just 'walking' towards us. He's advancing on us."

"I've heard that he has some very strange tastes in food, like chicken and lipstick."

"How about chocolate and earthworms?"

"Maybe that's what he's advancing towards."

Isobel opened Clive's gift and she threw it towards Rudolf. He devoured all of the chocolates and earthworms in seconds, and then he sat down on the footpath.

"He looks pleased with himself," Brendan said.

"If he follows us it'll be like all his Christmasses have come at once."

Rudolf stood up as soon as he heard this. He followed them to all of houses where Clive had left gifts. He was as friendly as a pet Labrador by the time he'd eaten all of the chocolates and earthworms. People returning from Christmas parties blamed alcohol for the sight they saw.

Clive was allowed back into the group. At first he was angry that his plan for revenge had been thwarted, but he couldn't deny that he enjoyed performing with the carol singers, standing in silence to show off the penguin hat. Isobel got Clive's brother to collect more earthworms. She put them into a bucket with some chocolates and she left it outside her front door on Christmas Eve. She ran downstairs on Christmas morning and she was delighted to find that the bucket was empty.

The moose's head over the fireplace is intrigued by the Christmas card we got from the wife's uncle. On the front of it there's an image of ice-skating ducks made of diamonds. He's been sending strange Christmas cards to everyone this year. One of his 'lady friends' received a card with an image of a goose drinking from a wine bottle. She was upset by this. She sent him a card with an image of a bowler hat floating in a swimming pool. She gave him a bowler hat for his birthday this year.

A Christmas Train

2009-12-16T03:39:00.000-08:00

We've found dry land again. Most of the decorations are up in the garden. The gnomes' footprints suggest that they've been trying to operate Santa's sleigh at night, now that their ship is stuck in the mud. But the sleigh isn't going anywhere either. Santa's sack is full of bricks to stop it blowing away in the wind. Some people think I did my Christmas shopping by knocking down a brick wall. It has been suggested that bricks would be far superior to the presents I normally give. If you're going to get someone a present that's likely to anger them (and in my experience it's extremely difficult to get anything else), you're better off giving something that isn't going to cause a serious injury when they throw it back at you. That's why socks are the ideal gift.

My cousin Charlotte uses natural decorations in her house at Christmas. She'll fill her house with things she finds in the woods, as much for the smell as for the look. A few days before Christmas one year she went out to search for holly and anything else that would add to the festive feeling. She found some moss and bark in the woods, and two logs that would look good next to the fireplace, even though she didn't have the heart to burn them. When she got to the pond she met Justin. He told her he was looking for a bag of nettles. He'd been collecting them all morning. He was going to take the nettles home and beat himself with them because someone had told him that this was a good way to cure boredom. He had misplaced the bag.

He was very surprised to hear that she was collecting wild Christmas decorations. She said she preferred simple things: home-grown vegetables rather than processed foods; vinyl records rather than CDs; acoustic eels rather than electric ones. She said she'd help him look for his nettles if he helped her look for decorations, and he agreed.

Their search failed to yield a bag of nettles, but they did find more moss, pine cones and twigs for Charlotte's house. When Justin saw a plastic bag stuck in a tree he said, "If I was decorating a Christmas tree it would probably end up looking like that. I'm no good with these things. That's why I'm perfectly happy waiting until spring when nature decorates the trees with leaves."

Charlotte hated the sight of the bag in the tree. She knew she wouldn't be able to forget about it if she left it there, so she climbed the tree to remove the bag. She found it very easy to forget about the bag after the branch broke and she fell to the ground, hitting her head off a root of the tree. She forgot where she was as well, but she recognised Justin, even though she called him Kevin. Justin could see that she needed medical attention. She was able to walk, so he led her back to his place, and then he drove her to a doctor's surgery. He was worried that she wouldn't have recovered her faculties enough to be able to pay the doctor, or that she'd have recovered her faculties enough to be able to pretend that she hadn't recovered her faculties enough when the time came to pay. This was why he took her to a doctor called Paul, who was known to be the cheapest doctor in the area. They'd get a very good deal from him, even though this was before his January sale.

Shortly after Charlotte finally figured out that she wasn't in a tree she realised that she was in a doctor's surgery. Paul held up four fingers in front of her and said, "How many spider's legs am I holding up?"

There were dozens of spiders on his hand, and they kept moving, so it was impossible to count them. And even if she could, she didn't think it would be safe to assume that all of those spiders had eight legs. She chose to ignore his question. She said, "How did you lose your finger?"

"I didn't lose it," he said. "I gave a loan of it to my brother."

"What's he doing with it?"

"He's using it to attract lightning. He thinks he won't get hurt if he holds my finger over his head in a storm. He probably thinks I'll get hurt instead. I'd tell him the truth about that, but I'd like to see him get hurt."

She noticed a headless mechanical Santa on his desk. She said, "Does that Santa keep his head in the sack on his back?"

"If any other doctor heard a question like that they'd say you're concussed, but my reaction is to point out that we have a lot in common."

Charlotte didn't have any reaction to that. A voice at the back of her mind told her she was concussed. She told him about her natural decorations and she asked him how he decorated his home. "I have no decorations at home," he said. "I hate being reminded of Christmas. The decorations here are for my patients. I'll be going home in a few minutes, and I can't wait to get back to a train carriage devoid of flashing lights and tinsel."

"We certainly have that in common, but I love being reminded of Christmas. What have you got against it?"

"When I was ten, all of my Christmas presents were made out of jelly. I cried as I ate the train set I asked for. Ever since then I've disliked the season. Although right now I can see the appeal of a jelly train. A woman used to come to my house in the evenings and cook a stew for me. As she cooked, I'd smoke cigars and tell her about my day's work. One evening she complained about my cigar smoke. I told her it added to the flavour of the stew. She was insulted. She said her stews didn't need any extra flavour, that she had brought them to a state of perfection and that anything added would necessarily diminish them. I should have apologised then, but I pointed out that she kept saying 'shoes' instead of 'stews'. I asked her if this was a Freudian slip. She's more sensitive about her shoes than she is about her stews. She left and she never came back. I've been trying to make my own dinners since then."

"I'd be delighted if you'd join me for dinner this evening. I'll cook."

"I'd be even more delighted to let you."

Justin was more delighted than anyone when he heard that he wouldn't have to pay. She invited him for dinner as well. The three of them went back to her place. Paul liked her Christmas decorations because they didn't remind him of Christmas at all.

As they were eating the dinner, Charlotte said, "Maybe the blow to my head has made me mix up what you told me about the jelly train, but did you say something about living in a train carriage?"

"I did. I do. I used to live in a house, but I sold that to buy a barge on the river, which was my dream. The barge sank. This also happened in my dream. I didn't have any insurance so I was forced to look for a more basic form of accommodation. I found that all I could afford was a coffin. The coffin-makers gave me a discount because I'd sent business their way before. Noel, my uncle, let me put it in one of his fields. I really enjoyed my time in the coffin, though I did have to put up with frequent visits from gravediggers looking for work. Noel's hobby is building towers. In the field where I lived he built a tower with wheels along one side so that when it fell over, as all of his towers do, he could use it as a train. When it fell over it crushed my coffin. I was at work at the time. I was lucky I wasn't killed when my coffin was destroyed because they'd have buried me in a cardboard box. Noel said I could live in one of the carriages of his new train. It's much better than the coffin. The train keeps moving, but only very slowly because he has to build new tracks every day."

Justin and Charlotte both said they'd like to see his carriage. Paul said they could call around on the following evening.

Noel had just finished work on the latest section of tracks when they arrived. The train had moved three feet that day. Paul gave them a tour of his carriage, which was very lavishly decorated. It reminded Charlotte of the Orient Express.

Charlotte came back to the carriage on Christmas Day with a present she'd made herself. It was an edible train set. The engine was made out of turkey. It was tied together with string to keep the stuffing inside. The final carriage was a cake that was iced. This meal was enough to restore Paul's love of Christmas. When they'd finished eating the train they went out to hunt for decorations to put up in his carriage. They saw a cardboard reindeer stuck in a tree. Charlotte was very tempted to bring it down and burn it, but she managed to forget about this one.

The moose's head over the fireplace loves the smell of Christmas cakes and puddings. He's in such a good mood he can even tolerate the occasional Christmas song, though he still frowns on anything I attempt to produce with an accordion. My great-grandfather could use the accordion to evoke the spirit of Christmas at any time of year. His accordion was always being invited to parties and he was expected to accompany it. To cope with the busy party schedule at Christmas, he learnt how to play and sing in his sleep. People were always telling him that he produced the most beautiful music they ever heard when he played in his sleep, but he could never remember the music and neither could they.

Finding a Fork

2009-12-09T04:05:00.000-08:00

It's time to start getting the outdoor decorations out of the shed. This year I'll need boats for Santa and his reindeer. One of our neighbours is building an arc in her garden. She's going to fill it with elves, reindeer, Santa and his wife. It would be a strange world if it was populated entirely by elves, flying reindeer and the progeny of Santa. At Christmas they'd need something more magical than they are, like flying unicorns and a man who enters houses through taps at night to deliver gifts that will have grown their own legs by the morning so the elves and Santa's ancestors will wake up to find their presents walking into walls as they wait to grow eyes.

My cousin Hugh always did his best to avoid a man called Terence, who behaved in a way that made most peace-loving people want to avoid him. If he wasn't up to no good, he was on his way up. People who angered him could expect retribution, and it was very easy to anger him. One of Hugh's friends had a dog who once ran into Terence's garden to relieve himself. The garden was in such a bad state that the dog's present wouldn't have done anything to diminish its beauty. If anything, it would have been a slight improvement. But Terence didn't see it this way. He responded by dumping a load of dead badgers on the lawn of the dog's owner. He'd been collecting them for years. Some of the badgers hadn't fully defrosted when Hugh's friend found them.

It wasn't always possible to avoid Terence. One evening he turned up on Hugh's doorstep with a bucket of sugar. "Do you want to buy a bucket of sugar?" he said. "It's only twenty euros."

If Hugh ever found himself wanting a bucket of sugar, it would be very unlikely that he'd want it enough to get it from Terence. But he certainly didn't want to annoy Terence. He chose to annoy himself by buying the bucket and its contents. Judging by the smell from the sugar, it would have been more likely to spoil food than to sweeten it, unless that food smelled even worse than the sugar, like Terence's garden being beautified by what the dog left behind. Hugh threw the sugar away.

On the following evening, he got a phone call from his fiancee, Annabel, who said she was calling around and they'd be going to visit her aunt, Stephanie. Hugh was annoyed because he hated visiting Stephanie. She never stopped asking him questions about his life and his views on life. She'd be disappointed if he didn't give a good answer to questions like 'Would you rather spend a week in the south of France or knock down a wall with a sledge hammer?'.

Shortly after this phone call, the doorbell rang. It was Terence again. "Do you want to buy another bucket of sugar?" he said. "It's only thirty euros."

Hugh was already annoyed after being told of his trip to see Annabel's aunt, and the additional irritation provided by Terence made him behave in a way he never would have foreseen. "Go away," he said, and he slammed the door.

He regretted his actions immediately. He knew he should have saved this reaction for Stephanie and humoured Terence. It would be almost impossible to avoid Terence. For the next few days, Hugh was nervous every time he left the house. He kept looking around him, terrified that Terence would emerge from behind a hedge and attack him.

He had to wait until Friday evening before the inevitable meeting arrived. Terence came over to him in the pub and said, "I want a word with you. I was very surprised by the way you reacted the other day. I never knew you were like that. I didn't think you had it in you. You've got balls. I need someone to help me with a job, and I think you're just the person. I want a lookout man, someone who won't lose his nerve and run away."

"What sort of job are you doing?"

"I want to get my fork back. The fork ended up at Janet's house because she offered me some cream cake when I was there. She was going to give me one of her own forks to eat it, but I prefer to use my own. I had it in my pocket. I could tell you lots of stories about people being poisoned by forks, and all of those people deserved it, no matter what any of them will tell you. When I was sitting down to my dinner later that evening I put my hands into my pockets to get my knife and fork. I found the knife in my right pocket but my left pocket was empty. I realised I must have left the fork at Janet's house, so I went back there. She told me she had washed it and put it into her cutlery drawer, but when she looked in there she couldn't find it. Fergus had called and she had given him some cake as well. He had used my fork and he must have put it into his pocket when he was finished with it. It was probably force of habit, she said, but I'd say if I asked him for the fork he'd tell me he'd never seen it before in his life. I need to get it back. That fork has sentimental value. I'd be here for the rest of the night if I started telling you about all the things it's been embedded in. I'm going to break into Fergus's house tomorrow morning when he's out walking his dog. I don't know how long I'll be inside because he might have hidden the fork somewhere. I want you to stay outside his front gate and if he comes back, stall him. Talk to him about... I don't know. I'll leave that up to you. Whatever you're comfortable talking about."

Hugh suspected that Terence was planning on taking much more than the fork, but he agreed to help because he was relieved to find that he wasn't on Terence's 'ten most wanted' list.

Terence called to Hugh's house on the following morning and they went to Fergus's place. They hid behind a ditch as they waited for him to leave with his dog. After he had gone, Terence went around to the back of the house and Hugh took up his post outside the front gate.

Hugh didn't think it was likely that Terence would be in there for very long. He had years of experience at getting in and out as quickly as possible, his pockets stuffed with plenty of things to keep his knife and fork company. But this job was taking longer. Perhaps he really did want the fork, and he was having trouble finding it. Hugh started to think about what he'd say if Fergus arrived back.

He had to think very quickly when Fergus arrived back sooner than expected. "I wanted to talk to you about something," Hugh said. "The thing I wanted to talk to you about was... Someone was telling me you had an interest in... ahm... Norway. This person might have been mistaken about that, but I have an interest in Norway myself. A slight interest. So I thought I'd come to see you and talk about Norway."

"I know why you're really here," Fergus said.

"You do?"

"People never come straight out with it. They always have to beat around the bush. They feel embarrassed by it, but I'm not in the slightest bit embarrassed by the fact that I can communicate with the dead."

"You're not?"

"No. I've never tried to hide the fact that I have a dead friend who follows me around."

"A ghost?"

"No. He's dead."

"Is he here now?"

"He's right behind me. His name is Jack. We solve crimes together."

"Are you sure you haven't got this idea from a TV show?"

"No. A TV show got the idea from me. Isn't that right Jack?... Really?... Are you sure?... I'm very disappointed to hear that."

"Did Jack tell you that you got the idea from a TV show?"

"No. He didn't. He told me that you're only out here to stall me while Terence is in my house."

"I don't know where he'd get an idea like that. From a TV show, most likely. What have you been watching on TV, Jack?"

"I'm going inside to deal with Terence and I'll leave Jack out here to deal with you."

Fergus went in. Hugh waited outside for a few minutes, but nothing happened. "Are you finished dealing with me, Jack?" he said to the empty space in front of him. The empty space didn't respond. "Then I suppose I'll be off home," Hugh said, and he left.

He forgot about Jack later that day when Annabel informed him that they had to pay another visit to Stephanie to cheer her up after she broke her china teapot.

As he tried to go to sleep that night his mind was full of the questions she had asked, like 'Do you think you could train a sheep to understand how traffic lights work?'. He was only able to forget about her when he became preoccupied with something more serious. He started to get a feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

When he heard noises downstairs he wished he hadn't been able to put his finger on it at all and that he was still thinking about Stephanie. He'd even settle for still being with Stephanie, still answering her questions about electricity and cheese. He knew he had to go out to investigate. He got a golf club to protect himself.

As he was walking down the stairs he saw something that couldn't be beaten away with a golf club. It was the ghost of a man who looked as if he had been alive in the nineteenth century.

Hugh started screaming, but he stopped when the lights came on. Fergus was there, and he was holding a camera. "It's a night vision camera," he said. "I've recorded your reaction. It's hilarious. I would have been completely against modern technology a few years ago, but here I am with my night vision camera and my digital projector to create the illusion of a ghost. God only knows what I'll be using next year. Jack knows as well, but he won't tell me because he doesn't want to ruin the surprise."

"I thought you were going to let 'Jack' deal with me."

"I was going to, but then I remembered that you thought Jack was a ghost. I had the ability to create the illusion of a ghost and you believe in ghosts. I couldn't let an opportunity like that slip by. So I let Jack deal with Terence instead."

Hugh was angry that Terence, the brains behind the operation, had gotten off so lightly, and he was afraid that Terence would be furious with him for throwing a spanner in the works. He'd say the operation required scalpels and tweezers, not spanners and pliers. Hugh couldn't help thinking that his face would need scalpels and tweezers in the safe hands of a medical practitioner after Terence had performed surgery with spanners and pliers. He tried to avoid Terence for as long as possible, but a meeting seemed inevitable a week later when Hugh saw him approaching on the street. Hugh feared the worst, but Terence walked right past without even looking at Hugh. He seemed preoccupied, as if he'd seen something much worse than a ghost. Of course, he might have just been pining for his fork.

The moose's head over the fireplace is wearing his red Christmas scarf instead of his green one. This is the only concession he'll make to the season at this stage. He refuses to listen to any Christmas music, so we never turn on the radio. He won't be happy if he sees the Christmas decorations floating past the window, so I'm going to have to tie them to a tree. The wife's aunt is wearing a grey hat that she intends to take off in January. It's just a plain grey hat now, but she's going to be decorating it over the coming weeks. The last time she did this, the hat became so big that she had to go down on her knees when she was going through doors.

The Twins

2009-12-02T03:35:00.000-08:00

Whenever the rain lets its guard down it allows winter to sneak in. The lawns were covered in frost on Monday morning. The dry weather gave me a chance to fix some of the holes in the roof of the shed. When I was in there I found my grandfather's home-brewing kit. After you had picked out all the biscuits from his beer there wasn't much left to drink. You had to eat the biscuits if you wanted to get drunk.

My cousin Ronan and his friend, Shane, were once hired to tidy a shed and to catalogue all of the items in it. A woman called Delia hired them to do the job after she heard a story about how they had used a robot to clean a room in a neighbour's house. This story had been altered as it passed from person to person. In a more accurate version, the word 'clean' would be replaced by the word 'destroy'. Delia had inherited the shed and its contents from her father. It was a big shed, but it was so full of junk that it was impossible to move around inside it. She had been meaning to clean it out for years, but she kept putting it off because it seemed too daunting.

Ronan and Shane agreed to do the job for her, though they did have some reservations. They were afraid of her sons, Nick and Karl, who were twelve-year-old twins. They often behaved strangely. They had taken up photography, and they were using a glasshouse as a dark room. They had covered the entire glasshouse in layers of black canvas. Their mother believed that the twins had telepathic powers. They made a model of a ship in a bottle without saying a word to each other as they worked. There were two tiny boxers fighting on the deck of the ship. Every day the twins got one of the boxers to throw a punch. They told this story about why the boxers were fighting: One of the boxers, a man called Frederick, had spent years telling tales about his days as a penguin-hunter. It turned out that he'd never hunted penguins at all, and that these tales were based on stories in a book called 'Making Penguins Dizzy'. The other boxer was a friend of his called Emmerdale, and he believed the stories until he came across the book in a second-hand bookshop one day. He accused Frederick of telling lies, but Frederick insisted that he really had been on expeditions to the Antarctic to hunt penguins. Emmerdale took Frederick to a ship to give his friend a chance to demonstrate his knowledge of seafaring. It became apparent very quickly that Frederick knew nothing about ships. Emmerdale was angry about being fooled for so long, and he challenged Frederick to a fight on the ship.

When Delia's father's brother called around one evening the twins showed him the ship in the bottle and they told him the story of the boxers. He said that the book 'Making Penguins Dizzy' really existed, and that their grandfather once owned a copy. When Delia heard this she took it as further evidence of their special powers. She wondered if the book was still in the shed, and this is what made her finally get around to doing something about the shed and its contents.

Ronan and Shane thought it would take weeks to tidy the shed and catalogue everything in it. After working on the job for a few hours they started to fear that they'd be doing it for months. Progress was slow. They realised that there were many more objects in the shed than they had previously guessed. Everything was tightly packed together, as if it had been neatly stacked to make maximum use of the space. In the first hour they filled pages of their catalogue with details of books, brass statues, taps, a phone, a silver brooch in the shape of a harpoon and glass beads.

They were surprised when they came across an empty space. It was just about big enough for Shane to crawl through. He could never resist crawling through spaces that were just about big enough for him to crawl through. He often had to do this when he was searching for ghosts, and this is why he always carried a flashlight with him. He shone the light into the space and he started crawling. He soon realised that it was actually a tunnel. "The twins must have created this," he said to Ronan. "This is how they knew about the book. They must have found it in the shed."

He kept crawling through the tunnel, and Ronan followed him. They were able to make their way all around the shed. At the end of the tunnel there was a trap door in the ground. It seemed easier to go forward than to go back because there wasn't enough room to turn around, so Shane opened the trap door and they climbed down a ladder.

The tunnel at the bottom of the ladder was big enough for them to walk through if they crouched. This one led them to another ladder, and thankfully this ladder went up. There was a trap door at the top of it, and above that they found a room that was decorated in a maritime theme. They found a barometer, and ropes that looked like the rigging from a ship. The timber railings and brass fittings added to the effect.

They realised they were in the glasshouse when the twins removed the black canvas. They noticed that there was no handle on the inside of the door, and there was no handle on the top of the trap door either, so they couldn't go back down the ladder.

"Ye're trapped," Karl said. "If ye want to get out, ye're going to have to fight, just like the boxers on our model ship in the bottle."

"We could fight," Ronan said. "Or we could just smash the glass to get out."

"Go ahead and try," Nick said. "We've installed Plexiglas."

Karl threw a hammer at the glasshouse and it bounced back. Ronan was worried at his easy access to a hammer.

"I suppose we better put on a show for them," Ronan said to Shane.

"I have a better idea," Shane whispered with a smile. "Let them think we have a better idea. We'll fool them into thinking we have a cunning plan, just to frighten them."

Ronan looked out at the twins and smiled. He nodded. "The only problem with that," he whispered, "is that they're not easily frightened."

"All we have to do is exactly what we're doing now. Just look out at them and smile as if you know what's coming their way, and keep whispering. Who wouldn't find that disconcerting?"

"They don't look very disconcerted to me. They haven't reacted at all."

"They never react to anything, but that doesn't mean there's nothing going on inside their heads. This project of theirs proves that."

"This project of theirs proves that they're not going to be disconcerted by two trapped men smiling at them."

"When you trap people they're not supposed to smile at you. That's the worst thing that can happen when you trap people. They're supposed to be terrified and do whatever you tell them to do. Now they're more terrified than we could ever be. They know what they've done to us, and they think we have something worse planned for them, but they don't know what it is. They'll crack. It's just a matter of smiling and waiting."

The stand-off went on for over an hour. It came to an end when the twins looked at each other and nodded. Nick said, "It's time to confess that we don't really have telepathic powers."

"I told you they'd crack," Shane whispered to Ronan.

"But we do have exceptionally good hearing," Karl said. "So start fighting."

"I suppose we don't have any choice," Shane said, and he threw a punch at Ronan.

Ronan just shook his head and said, "You're going to have to punch me harder than that to satisfy them."

"If I punch you harder I'm going to hurt you."

"That's what they want."

"I'm not sure I can do that."

"What if I made fun of your attempt to seduce Belinda?"

Shane punched Ronan hard enough to hurt him and he said, "Why don't you go ahead and see what happens."

After Ronan had regained his senses he charged at Shane. In the fight that followed they wrecked the maritime-themed interior of the glasshouse. They broke railings to use as weapons. Anything that wasn't nailed down was used as a missile, and anything that was nailed down was torn up. They didn't notice how upset the twins were to see all their hard work destroyed. The boxers in the model ship had never behaved like this. Nick and Karl replaced the covers to stop the fight.

The twins were furious. They insisted that Ronan and Shane repair all the damage they had done. Serious consequences were threatened if the interior of the glasshouse wasn't fully restored. Ronan and Shane said they'd start work on it after they'd finished their work in the shed.

They only said this because they wanted time to think of a way out of restoring the glasshouse. It could take months to do that job. They could refuse to do it, but they were worried by the threat of these unspecified 'serious consequences'. That sounded serious, coming from the twins.

As they were working in the shed they stumbled across a way out of their problem. Ronan found a box that was full of photos. The twins featured in all of them. In one photo they were wearing teddy bear costumes.

Ronan showed it to Shane. "It's easy to see why they'd hide this," he said. "The rest of the photos are just as bad. They must have taken these from family photo albums and hid them in here."

"We should copy these as soon as possible, and hide the copies somewhere secure."

"And maybe enlarge a few copies as well."

"And remind them that we have our own newspaper."

"Maybe we shouldn't mention the newspaper if we want them to take us seriously."

The twins did take them seriously. Their facial expressions actually changed when they saw Ronan holding an enlarged copy of the teddy bear photo. Their expressions didn't change back for a few days. The look of horror remained frozen on their faces, and most people found this reassuring. It was much better than the blank expression they normally wore.

The moose's head over the fireplace is still wearing his green scarf, but now it's more about celebrating the rugby team rather than protesting against the fate of the soccer team. The wife's uncle says that he once wore a scarf for five weeks during one winter. He spent that time at a succession of Christmas parties. There were so many to get through that he couldn't stay at any one of them for long enough to take his scarf off. When he finally removed it on Christmas Day he found a nest with four chicks. He was surprised to find that the source of the noise wasn't in his head after all.