Adventures in a Dog Collar Part 347

This is a true story. It reminds me again that the only way anyone can become a half-decent writer (I make no claims) is to go to places alone.

A few days ago I was advised to allow extra time to get from Nailsea to Wells because of the Glastonbury traffic. So I did and arrived an hour early. I opted for a sandwich and a pint at my favourite Wells haunt, The Crown. It's my favourite because they have a knack, not available at many pubs, of fast-tracking the sandwich queue.

At the bar I was asked for a table number. This is not easy for a single diner because you need to leave a possession unguarded at a table in order to reserve a seat. I found a seat where a couple were just leaving and left my bag with them.

Having ordered I went to the table and the occupants asked if I wanted to separate two tables which they had put together. I said no and then the man noticed my dog collar and told me he understood that as I was a clergyman I was gregarious (friends, keep your chuckles down, please).

Then, having told me I was gregarious, he told me the story of how the Master of Divinity at his College suggested that as he knew a good port and could sing he ought to consider ordination and put him in touch with the Professor of Theology at Exeter, where my story-teller now was, who would ask him for dinner. Some more junior members of whichever faculty he was at were, apparently, miffed that he queue jumped the dinner list at such dinner. On arrival he was asked 'Have you met the family' and when he said he had not he was given a huge scotch and told me would need it.

This may seem garbled because I got all this in a stream of consciousness and the idea of being stopped for clarification didn't seem to occur to my speaker.

He was then asked if he wanted to join a Hebrew, Latin or Greek supper club. The story sort of ran out without a punchline (the man was not ordained, then or ever). Surprisingly he then asked me who I was and where I came from. I got as far as 'ordination weekend' when he continued with a string of how he was going to the deaconing on Sunday. I also answered the question with the single word 'Nailsea' and hit a poor joke about a chiropodist. His companion left in the middle of all this (with a resigned expression on my behalf).

Someone in the story was called Robert Mortimer I think.

Sometimes I can only be a pastor if I remember I am also a writer. I can listen because I can anonymise, retell and hopefully entertain. Do with all this what you want.

Rich Gospel Investigates

As delivered at Trendlewood Church on Christmas Day. Apologies that the opening joke is a local one. You may need to fit your own in to use elsewhere. To use this in a service dress as a private eye (dark glasses, hat, raincoat with collar pulled up).

On the word intriguing – stroke your chin before speaking it

On the word suspicious - look round from side to side before speaking it

On the word mysterious - scratch your head as if puzzled

Rich was reading the letters page of his local newspaper. He found it hard to understand why people seemed so anxious about car parking spaces in a town you could walk round in an hour.

Very mysterious (head scratch).

Still, not a problem for him. Foreign supermarket chains could, under no circumstances, be enquired into by a firm that specialised in 'Paranormal, supernatural and doctrinal investigations'. He dealt with huge issues'; not Lidl ones.

As he folded the paper away he spotted an advert. He scraped the spots off again so he could read it.

Wanted.

Someone who can explain why my Advent calendar only goes up to 24.

Love Joanna

'This is indeed my area of expertise' he said to himself, thinking doubly deeply, although it came out as 'Well, well'.

But it was also a good question. Very intriguing (stroke chin).

When is advent? he asked. No-one answered, because he was alone. He decided to take his thoughtfulness to a coffee shop. He was in a quandary. He must have got in it absent-mindedly so he got out and found his own car.

In the local coffee shop he asked, 'When is advent?'

This time the other customers all looked at him strangely and returned to their lattés and laptops.

He noticed an Advent calendar on the wall. It started at 1 and ended at 24. Joanna was right. But he recalled that Advent Sunday was only sometimes on the 1st of December and it hadn't been this year. So that was very mysterious (head scratch).

He went round the shops. That didn't work so he went in. He bought a selection of calendars. It would probably be the only time he could put chocolate on expenses.

After careful research and some alka-seltzer he concluded that door number 7 was usually a fluffy thing, door 14 was often weird and door 24 had a baby behind it.

Nor was there any consistency. Nobody seemed to agree about the picture to put behind each window. Maybe that was why he got so many messages saying Windows was updating.

But there never was a day 25. Christmas Day. The best day was never there. Very intriguing (stroke chin).

Did people have no time for it?

Did no-one know what to put behind the door?

Was there no money to be made out of 25 door calendars?

Very suspicious (look over shoulders).

He should start a campaign for real advent calendars on which door 7 showed a woman with a 2.00 a.m. craving for pickled walnuts and door 24 had Joseph saying 'Push'.

He made a mental note. Then he scrubbed his head and made the note in his pocket book, which was far more sensible. He was making no progress. He went home and looked at all the things he had noted in his pocket book. He decided to sleep on it.

He woke 30 minutes later in great pain and decided to sleep on his bed instead.

Considering he was fully fit it was odd that he slept fitfully.

Waking early he took a bath. 'Oy that's my bath' said a three inch tall, five foot wide man from down the corridor. It was his flatmate.

Instead of taking a bath he used his own shower. As the warm water refreshed him he remembered an old priest he had once met. He seemed to be a kindly old soul and had a breadth of knowledge about all things theological - especially the mysterious (head), intriguing (chin) or suspicious (shoulders). But the man was very long-winded so Rich only visited him in emergencies.

He bolted down a bowl full of wild bird seed with some milk, unaware the the garden birds were now eating muesli and enjoying it more than him.

He raced to the church where the kindly old priest worked. He was replacing a pink candle with a purple one mumbling about Mary candles. Rich had no idea who Mary Candles was.

He knew the priest was a bit deaf. As he was facing away from the door he walked right up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

The elderly priest came round a few minutes later. Since he'd been terrified out of it Rich put him back into his skin.

'Hello Mr Gospel', said the priest, recognising him at last. 'What can I do for you?'

Rich explained about the problem with the Advent windows and how he was finding it all very mysterious (head).

The priest said, and we know he did because Rich took the precaution of recording it, having first reassured the owner of the precaution that he would give it back in a minute:

'An Advent calendar is a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Since the date of the First Sunday of Advent varies, falling between November 27 and December 3 inclusive, many Advent calendars often begin on December 1, although those that are produced for a specific year often include the last few days of November that are part of the liturgical season. The Advent calendar was first used by German Lutherans in the 19th and 20th centuries but is now ubiquitous among adherents of many Christian denominations. December 25th is the first day of the season of Christmas, not the last day of the season of Advent.'

Amazing. He noted never to use liturgical, ubiquitous, adherent and denominations in the same sentence ever. But he had solved the problem.

As he left the church he saw Joe, the local paper boy.

'Hey Joe' he said 'Do you know why Advent calendars only go up to 24?'

He was looking forward to impressing Joe with his new-found knowledge. He liked impressing young people.

'Yeah', said Joe. 'It's so we can sell them next year if we over-stock.'

Trouble with trying to impress kids, thought Rich. They just don't get easily impressed.

And now he had another problem. Which answer to give Joanne?

THE END

Previous episodes of Rich Gospel Investigates Christmas can be found at:

http://stevetilley.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/rich-gospel-investigates.html

http://stevetilley.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/rich-gospel-investigates.html

http://stevetilley.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/rich-gospel-investigates-light.html

A New Version of an Old Story, possibly not for Church Magazines

Wrote this a few years ago but it feels surprisingly apt today:

Somebody, Everybody, Anybody, Nobody

This is a story about four people called Somebody, Everybody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was a job which Anybody could have done, but he didn’t. Somebody came along and said, ‘Look, Anybody could have done this.’

Everybody agreed that Anybody had screwed up big-time. Somebody phoned Nobody. ‘Get here now,’ said Somebody, ‘and bring that big shooty thing’.

Nobody came along and let Anybody have it. Blood, guts, death, mess. Everybody laughed. ‘Tosser’, said Nobody. ‘Deserved it,’ said Everybody.

Somebody videoed it. Everybody paid for the new snuff movie and Anybody, who should have done it in the first place, is now famous for what happened when he didn’t.

Just do it. Or Nobody may come and get you.

Multiplying Money for Trinity Project

Starting cash = £10

Spent:
£10.00 (nice paper)
£3.00 postage
£3.00 parcel box

Donated:
Three click-frames

Payment received:
£30

Outstanding commissions = 3

Money in hand £24
Profit so far £14

Anyone else want to order a framed, illustrated, original story to give to a friend for a gift? Or to keep. Give me some life-details and I'll concoct a one page story.

Tales from Tacklake - 2. John's dog.

It's been a quiet week in Tacklake. The single set of traffic lights continued to change without requiring maintenance or repair. The River Tack maintained its course to the sea, barely stopping to notice that it had widened imperceptibly and that locals had called that place a lake. Nominative determinism sees to it that this small town (big village?) has a name that works.

Here John, local pub owner, is walking his dog, mid-morning.

The three historic Tacklake families, the ones who have lived here since it was no more than a village unfamiliar with the County Development Plan, do not have appropriate names.

There are the Butchers. Whilst there is still a lean to building behind their shop which was once the end of a short journey for animals about to become meat, they were put out of business by the two supermarkets some years ago. Their sideline of meat pastry products remained popular however and so Butchers are now bakers. Fred Butcher walks to work well before dawn.

Then there are the Trowts. They ought, all things being equal, to run the small trout farm on the opposite side of town to the lake. They don't. Trowt is a family name and the family is descended from the ninth Earl of Pembroke, an adulterous man who left Wales when the ninth Lady Pembroke discovered him in a rarely used loft room with an often-abused domestic assistant. The Trowts are, as they say, big in the city, although as the city is not London they are not that big. But they still live in large enough houses to employ domestics, albeit ones who no longer live on their nerves.

Finally the Smiths. All Smiths are probably descended from smiths. The days when the rural idyll of England required horses to be shod regularly are long gone. There are more Smiths in Tacklake than the law of averages would have allocated but none of them have anything to do with horses. Even Harvey, oldest son of George and Ruth Smith and named after their favourite show-jumper, remains gloriously undetermined by his moniker. He did once steal a tractor and drive it round the lake. It was as close to rural as he ever got. Sobering up the next day he drove it back to the farm where he had found it and apologised. Arthur Field (yes, at least one name fits), who lost a teenage son in the army, was forgiving. He wondered if this is the sort of thing his Billy would have done if it hadn't been for an - he can't bring himself to call it an improvised explosive device. A bomb left his Billy in bits.

The Butchers are bakers, the Trowts are bankers and the Smiths are what-have-you-got?

The lake is a popular place with dog walkers, most of whom diligently clear up after their pets and carry small black bags of shit on their walks. Today John carries two, his collie too excited to do all his business in one go.

By mid morning, especially at weekends, the campaign led by one particularly militant mobility scooter user leaves walkers in danger of being run down by the differently able. The same percentage of the can't-walk is dangerous at buggy driving as we find with the can-walk and cars.

There is a yelp as a border collie is struck by a sticking-out crutch. Its back is cut. There is blood everywhere. The mobility scooter doesn't stop. It is a hit and run. John could chase it. It is not going as fast as a runner could. But his dog is in pain and he weighs up how much he really wants to be shouting at a disabled woman about being more careful in future. It wouldn't end well. It could cost him business and times are hard enough. He has a towel in the car and wipes the dog down. Petsafe Insurance is about to save him some cash.

It's been a quiet day in Tacklake. No one died; no one was born. On his late evening walk a black and white border collie wears the lampshade of shame. Other dogs pass by and John can feel the owners' disdain at his bloody, stitched up pet. 'Why couldn't he care for it?'

He wants a banner to proclaim. 'Run over by crazy cripple.'

But around Tacklake people will be talking. He knows it. 'That John...' he imagines them saying, '...he should look after his dog more carefully.' Then they discuss how unwise it is to keep a lively dog cooped up in a pub yard all day.

But the dog is happy. He has a routine and the cut will heal. He's in no hurry. He won't have to wait for the traffic lights to change when Tacklake's rush fifteen minutes begins tomorrow.

Tales from Tacklake - 1. Enid's Funeral.

It's been a quiet week in Tacklake. A few people died, some were born and matters of great concern were few.

Pastor Peters cleans the mud off his best black shoes, the victims of a clarty graveyard after the drought broke. It wasn't the most difficult funeral he had ever done, although the bearers carrying Donny Davies' mortal remains to his final resting place possibly wished the deceased had followed more assiduous dietary advice. They got a sweat on; not common round here in March. Mind you, if he had followed dietary advice Donny probably wouldn't have been troubling the undertakers yet.

The worst funeral I ever did? Pastor Peters ponders. The questioner, in the Three Tuns after the burial, doesn't really want to know about the babies, the accident victims and the suicides. He wants one of Pastor Peters' stories. And he's told the ones about the grave full of water, the stuck hearse door and the order of service misprint many times.

'Let me see' says the Pastor, a sign that he does have a tale to tell. Glasses are recharged and a small crowd gathers.

The Pastor recalls his first funeral here, some years ago. He hadn't really got to grips with the local habits or sensitivities. Robed and ready he walked through the churchyard to greet the mourners and coffin. His first Tacklake funeral. Enid Bale - deceased.

He whispers a few words to Arthur, the Undertaker - a greying man, sombre, elegant and masonic. Then he greets Jim, recent widower, who went to the Maldives with a wife and came back with a corpse. Elderly, but none the less tragic. Holidays shouldn't be like that. Then he turns to the bearers to offer the ubiquitous, 'Thank you gentlemen' - the sign that they should remove the coffin from the hearse.

A man dressed in faded jeans and white T-shirt is walking a dog along the road. He doesn't stop out of respect. Few do these days. Behind him another man walks determinedly over to the funeral party. He walks between Arthur and Jim and comes right up to Pastor Peters. He speaks from too close in, the way only the rudely unaware do.

'How long's this going to go on for?' He spits the question at Pastor Peters whose glasses become blurred by saliva.

Pastor Peters is an experienced priest. But he's never had to cope with this before.

The good pastor thinks quickly. How long's what? The funeral? About 30 minutes and then to the graveside. He can't mean that. This is a generic question. The man is angry about something more than funeral length. But what? Pastor Peters is aware that the bearers now have the coffin half in and half out of the hearse, although Enid does not present anything like the challenge Donny will in a few years time. He looks at his accuser in a way that only good pastors can, inviting him to elaborate without saying so.

The spitter gestures around at the black Daimlers and hearse which are temporarily blocking the quiet lane. 'Emergency vehicles couldn't get through.'

So, here is the problem. Not this funeral but a local resident angry at the church's occasional - Spitter would say 'constant' - disruption. A Tudor church is disrupting the traffic its builders never imagined.

Pastor Peters runs through all the things it would be inappropriate to say. 'The church was here before the car.' Probably not helpful. 'Well if someone dies we have an undertaker handy' is speedily dismissed. Followed by, 'If you keep interrupting this funeral you'll be the one who needs the emergency services.' No. That might start a fight too. 'You insensitive bastard' is also quickly eliminated from enquiries. The insensitive are rarely calmed by being reminded of their affliction.

He breathes and pauses. 'I'm not sure this is an appropriate moment to have this conversation' he says. 'Why not pop round to the Church office and leave your name and address. I'll come and talk to you later. I don't think it's fair to keep this family waiting.'

Remarkably, Spitter notices what he's just done. He doesn't apologise to anyone but he harrumphs and turns to leave. The funeral commences with Pastor Peters intoning 'I am the resurrection and I am the life' in the middle of an adrenaline rush. It is not until Enid is resting in peace that his heart-rate is doing the same.

Popping into the parish office he discovers that Spitter is well known to the local church team but he has never done anything like that before. 'Glad it wasn't one of the curates that happened to' says the wise office administrator.

Indeed. Except you only get to be an experienced pastor by things like that happening to you. That's the punchline.

The gathered look at the Pastor who taps his glass affectionately. A pint appears and a toast to Donny is offered. Bar manager Paul joins in with a false smile, aware that this death has seriously dented his profit margin.

The Animals' Tales

As used at Holy Trinity, Nailsea Crib Service yesterday.

The Story of the Journey - The Donkey's Tale
I am a donkey. To tell the truth I don't have a name. Everyone calls me little. I suppose I am small for my age. But small creatures can do important tasks.

Caesar Augustus wanted to know how many people were in the Roman Empire. So he made everyone go home.

When a census was taken in the Roman Empire everyone had to get back to their birthplace and sign in. All the important people got the best rides. Those with no money either walked or got a donkey.

I got to carry this woman who was pregnant. Very pregnant. I put my hooves down really carefully in case a loud noise started her off.

And her bloke, Joseph, came from David's family. The great King David of Israel. And everyone knows that he came from - yeah that's right - Bethlehem, In Judea. But they lived in Nazareth in Galilee. That's eighty miles away and further if you don't want to go through Samaria. Which we didn't. Scum.

It took us a week. Amazing she didn't have the baby on the way.

And when we got to Bethlehem it was ramming. I wondered if some people wanted to show off that they came from the same town as David.

And all the rooms were taken. Everyone must have got there early to get a bed. So Mary and Joseph had to kip at my place. With the other animals.

I'll let Daisy the cow take the story on.



Inside the Stable - The Cow's Tale
Moo. Moo.

Hi I'm Daisy. High quality, organic milk supply to the hospitality industry.

This bit of the story gets exaggerated. Everyone reckons they know what happened and adds a bit of detail. To be honest it all took place quite quickly. Mary and Joseph crashed in the barn and that was where she had the baby. When Luke wrote it down all he said was:

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first-born, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger...

As I remember it we all tried to move to the side to give them a bit of room. Everyone respects a birth round here.

But it all went well. Lots of happy voices and then Mary and the baby went to sleep and Joseph went to the pub.

We had a bet on what they would call the kid. My money was on David - it seemed to fit - but everyone lost. They called him Joshua; that's Jesus in Greek. It means 'The Lord saves.' Hmm. I wonder.

How do I know all this? Remember, not all cows are as silly as they look.


Out in the Fields - The Sheep's Tale
It was night. We were all asleep. It was a bit of a boring night.

Sorry. I'm forgetting myself. Name's Harry. Harry the lamb. I told my Mum it would have been easier to remember if it had been Larry but what can you do?

I'll never forget what happened next. It became day. Not slowly as usual. At once. In an instant. Kaflash!

And a thing appeared. I didn't know what it was. The shepherds, who had been doing OK up to then, went crazy. They are supposed to protect us but they hid behind us while we tried to hide behind each other. It was chaos.

And a voice said:

Do not be afraid.

Didn't really work. We carried on being more afraid. Because the kaflash talked.

Then it spoke some more and said a baby had been born, was dressed in cloths, was lying in a manger and was really quite important.

The kaflash got brighter and started singing:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.

Rubbish song. Great video.

So the shepherds left us and went to visit Bethlehem. Left us. Alone in the dark again. In the fields, by ourselves. That was frightening.

When they came back they seemed very excited. They kept talking about what had happened and told everyone who passed by the next day.

Amazing.


Another Journey - the Camel's Tale
If you want to go somewhere in style you don't walk. You don't go on a little donkey. You hire a camel.

That's me that is. Tall. Distinguished. Very capable. Someone once called us the ships of the desert.

They must have meant my sister. She looks like the back end of a liner. I, on the other hand...

Anyway, my story.

One day some wise men who studied the stars hired me and my mates for a few weeks to travel to the east, to Jerusalem. They wanted to see a new king. They had seen it in the stars.

In Jerusalem we stopped and asked where the king was, thinking everyone would send us to the Palace. Nobody knew anything.

Eventually some priests and teachers did a bit of checking. They told King Herod, the current king, what they had found out. He sent us on our way to Bethlehem. We looked up and a star seemed to be moving there too. Cool.

When we got to Bethlehem we found a house where the baby they were all talking about lived. The wise guys went in and said hello and left presents.

Herod had told us to report back to him but the wise guys decided not to. There was something of the night about him.

Rich Gospel Investigates the Light

To use this in a service dress as a private eye (dark glasses, hat, raincoat with collar pulled up)

On the word intriguing – stroke your chin before speaking it

On the word suspicious - look round from side to side before speaking it

On the word mysterious - scratch your head as if puzzled

It was Christmas Eve and Rich Gospel was about to go home for Christmas.

It was a busy time of year. At the offices of Glad, Tidings, Comfort and Joy – the theological detective agency – the phone was ringing incessantly. Sadly, incessantly wasn't picking up.

'Paranormal, supernatural and doctrinal investigations,' they'd put on the business cards.

Very popular this time of year. It had been the busiest Christmas season ever and Rich had taken all the countings. Oops. Of course he meant counted all the takings. Obviously.

Suddenly a letter came through the window and landed on his desk. The window had been closed but luckily the letter was tied to a brick.

Very (look round from side to side) suspicious.

He raced outside but there was no-one in sight. Very (scratch your head) mysterious.

Picking bits of broken glass out of his hair, Rich opened the letter.

'Dear Mr Gospel', it said, 'My daughter has asked for a very specific sort of torch for Christmas. She wants a light that shines in the darkness that the darkness doesn't understand.'

Rich had a ponder. He toasted it and spread it with jam. Best ponder he'd had for ages. Then he went back to his train of thought. Sadly the station was closed so he had to return to work.

He knew about light. It wasn't as clever as it was made out to be. Think about it. Every time you put a light on it is because the room is dark. The dark must have got there first. If scientists listened to him (which they didn't because they tried to avoid being in the same room as an eccentric crank) they would be investigating not the speed of light but the speed of dark.

He had a little wonder, a 1987 one, a good year for wonder. It went very well with the ponder he had just finished.

So if all the girl wanted was a light that shines in the darkness he could give her a torch, a lamp, a candle, a bulb, a match, a fire, a tinderstick, a taper, a laser beam, a thunderflash... easy. But she wanted a light that the darkness didn't understand. Weird. In fact very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

Only recently he had whispered into his computer keyboard that he hadn't washed his hands today. This had turned it off.

He picked it up and kicked it across the room. This booted it up. He waited for it to be ready for use again.

He decided to search for lights that shine in the darkness but this simply took him to the web-sites of lighting companies. Very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

So he changed his search string for a piece of rope and tried the words 'understanding the darkness'. This took him to some very disappointing web-sites all about goths. Very (scratch your head) mysterious.

He was about to remove the piece of wood from the top of the computer to log off when he noticed, far down the search list, a quote from a book by a man called John. Men called John were, in his experience, deeply in touch with the innermost secrets of the theological universe. Something to do with the meaning of their name. Jonathan means God has given us a gift.

He read the quote. It was from a very old book but he thought he had one which he had used last Christmas when investigating angels.

He got the book down from his shelf. He read the beginning of John:

...and the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendesd it not.

It was very old language in his Bible; he must get a new one. Then he had a thought. After his ponder and wonder he was pretty full but eating always helped. Comprehending. That means understanding, doesn't it?

Very (stroke your chin) intriguing.

He read on. On wasn't as interesting as the Bible so he went back to it. What was this light?

As he read he found out more and more. The light wasn't a torch or a candle. It was illuminating in a different way. It was a person. A person who throws light on things. A person who - very (scratch your head) mysterious - was said to come from God.

Still he had his answer and that was what he got paid for. He was about to send the reply when he realised he had no address to write back to. Just a brick and a broken window. He'd forgotten that this was very (look round from side to side) suspicious.

He went back into his office where a surfer was just leaving. He was from an emergency boarding company and had tidied up the window.

Give me the answer he said, and the brick. If you let me take it to the client she'll pay for the window to be fixed. She just wanted to get your attention.

Very (scratch your head) mysterious. But he had one thing in common with the window. He was also shattered. He headed for home before anyone else needed investigating, a copy of John's clever book tucked under his arm, to read over Christmas.

This is what he started to read...

(Reading John 1:1-14)

Give me just a little more time

No, not another entry on the music list but out of place. More than that.

Frank Knowles, Head Teacher at Walter Halls Primary School in Mapperley, Nottingham, had a great assembly. It was an old folk tale but it worked well and I've used it a lot. It also helps me from time to time. You probably know it so I've updated it.

It concerns a man who lived in a small house with his wife and three children. Once he had lived there alone, but now there were five. Concerned at how to cope with his loss of personal space he was fortunate that he lived in a village where all such problems were taken to the wise old lady at the end of the street. Mrs Wise was her name. Which was great as Mrs Rubbish would have been rubbish.

She scratched her beard, or would have done if she had had one, and said. 'Hmm. You need to get a cat.'

He got a cat. It delighted his small children who had a new playmate. They teased it, chased it and stroked it. It purred on their laps when they sat down for a story. However the man, who we didn't give a name to so we shall call Edna, found all his furniture scratched and little gifts in the house plants rather than the cat litter tray.

He went back to see Mrs Wise. After another moment of imaginary beard stroking she said, 'You need a dog.'

So Edna got a lovely little puppy. The children fed it and petted it and laughed as it chased the now terrified cat round the house. It was a great pet, although Edna now had to get up half an hour earlier to walk the dog before work, had to spend money on cat food and dog food and vets' bills, and found many of his prized ornaments broken on the floor after a chasing scenario.

'Mrs Wise,' he said, relaxing at her house with a vodka and tonic (another reason why her advice was highly sought-after was her copious supply of fine spirits and wines) 'You have not solved my problem.'

'Chicken,' She said.

'I'm not,' replied Edna.

'No', she said, 'You need to get chickens.'

So Edna got chickens and they laid beautiful eggs for breakfast which made everyone happier and healthier. But the cock made a lot of noise when it woke up and so the dog woke up early and needed a wee earlier because, unlike the cat, it didn't pee in the bathroom orchids and asked nicely to be let out, and so Edna became more and more tired.

'Last go,' said Mrs Wise, admitting she was coming up short in the wisdom department of late perhaps it was all the gin, 'Get a cow.'

Several days later, at a family emergency meeting, Edna wondered why Mrs Wise had been so poor at advice. Granted they were drinking fresh milk and eating scrambled eggs at breakfast, and everyone seemed fitter and happier because laughter and exercise produce endorphins and that's good, but they were all sleeping in the corner of one room and often woke up with a cat in the mouth.

'Go and see her one more time,' said Edna's wife Bill.

So he did.

As he arrived at Mrs Wise's house he saw the ambulance. She was on a stretcher and being taken to hospital with liver failure. She croaked. No, not that sort of croaked. She croaked a sentence at Edna. 'Normally I'd advise you to sell all the animals and then you'd enjoy living in the same space as you had before on the you-don't-know-what-you've-got-'til-it's-gone principle but in this case I'm not so sure so I think you should buy a bigger house.' She was good at croaking.

So Edna went back and told Bill and they got out their savings and applied for a mortgage and bought a bigger house.

Which gives us a slightly more complex morality tale than we bargained for, but to summarise:

Don't go and get help if there is an obvious answer staring you in the face.
Try and avoid taking advice off drunken old women.
Never, under any circumstances, get a cat.

Diesel the labrador has gone home this morning at the end of his holidays and that gives me time, having taken him for a walk at 5.45 a.m. in the dark and he could still retrieve, amazing, to appreciate the space in my lovely house and write a story. Thanks Diesel. It's been a blast. Thanks Frank, and probably a Brother Grimm lurking in the background somewhere.

A Million Small Glances and Light Touches - A Very Short Story

Just occasionally you catch someone’s eye in the street and you don’t both look away.

Keith was standing just to the edge of the crowd in the boutique. Samantha was browsing and he had left her to it. His mind wandered. He felt her reassuring touch and squeezed her hand, not looking or really paying attention. Then he saw her.

Samantha was making her way across the store intently grasping a pair of faded blue jeans and asking an assistant for directions to the changing rooms. So he was standing there holding the hand of a stranger.

The passing stranger in the street presents so little time to make a verdict. Dress sense, personal hygiene, a smile and deportment are all you get. And yet. And yet. How often, within those mini-encounters, do those of us happily linked to permanent partners take a moment to sketch out an alternative life?

Keith hasn’t let go quickly enough. He feels his hand becoming sweaty but the person it is linked to is still a mystery to him. How on earth can he make eye contact? Should he indeed. Well should he? And if he doesn't, how can he escape?

Jann - A Short Story Part 10 (the last)

Rick turned out to be a real gentleman. He took the rap. It was his idea, he said, his scheme. He merely enlisted Jann’s help to hand over the documents. She didn’t know they were falsified. She thought Rick had been chivalrous in hiring expensive jewellery for her to wear. He lied through his teeth to protect his partner. Jann knew she’d been stupid but also knew she’d been loved.

The jury were split. They agreed on Rick’s guilt but not even a majority could convict Jann. She got away with it.

Rick went down for nine months. Jann agreed to leave her job with a good reference. When Rick gets out of Winson Green prison next week she will be in the car waiting for him. She still doesn’t know what she will say yet. He’s been faithful to her but he’s a crook. She can’t yet bring herself to admit that she is too.

(Started on a train to London in about 1998 and finished recently. For Jann, who asked me to use her name in a story)

Jann - A Short Story Part 9

The cheque arrived, eventually. Rick and Jann were married. They had a nice honeymoon, upgraded their car, treated the kids and extended their wardrobes. They settled down. They probably both intended their life of crime was over. If they now left it behind them they were unlikely to ever be traced.

Was it greed? Was it a desire for a thrill? Was it the little kicks from the against-all-odds pregnancy threatening their finances. Nobody knows, but they decided to go again. Same stunt, different places, new rented property, false name.

The discovery of their fraud was as fortuitous as Jann and Rick’s meeting. In a small hotel many miles from their home a relationship, no, an affair, had begun. Sue and Tommy, clerks who worked in insurance call-centres, bored with their own lives, booked a hotel room for a long lunch hour. Over a post-adventure cigarette they chatted about their work and came up with the coincidence that a current claim for jewellery theft Sue was handling looked remarkably like another one Tommy had dealt with a few months earlier. Back in the office Sue brought the record up on her database and made a call to Tommy. She pulled on the thread and all Jann and Rick’s trails unravelled.

Jann - A Short Story Part 8

They had it photographed professionally. Then they returned it.

Two weeks later they took out an insurance extension for the new inheritance (from a loving aunt). They used Rick’s name. They evidenced the policy with the photos and the valuation - £30,000.

Whilst their love grew and the minor frauds kept the extra money trickling in they did nothing. In fact they waited patiently until the second year of the insurance and then reported a burglary to the police. They broke a bedroom window, from the outside, and ransacked Rick’s bedroom. Although he and Jann lived together by then he had retained his own rented property. Arriving home later Rick phoned the police at once and then phoned Jann and told her what had happened. She feigned surprise excellently and even told her kids for the first time.

‘It’s terrible,’ Rick explained to the police and later the loss adjuster, ‘It’s so unusual for me to be out these days but we were celebrating our engagement. What a thing to come back to.’

Jann - A Short Story Part 7

It was a few weeks later that he raised the matter again. If many little scams had succeeded why not one big one? Rick sketched out his plan. Because Jann trusted him she perhaps looked a little less carefully at the details than she might otherwise have. Whilst staring into his eyes she was poor at listening. Still, the plan seemed pretty good. It never crossed her mind to be suspicious that this lovely, trusting romantic had been spending so much time working out a major fraud. After all she was also a loving, trusting romantic and she had been on the fiddle – just a little but a little fiddle is still illegal.

It worked like this. For special occasions certain jewellers would hire out expensive diamond necklaces against a large deposit. Rick dreamed up a special occasion and took Jann to hire the piece. It was beautiful and she dreamed of wearing it round her neck. But this function was non-existent. Instead of a weekend at a house party they drove as far away from home as they could and in another city arranged for the necklace to be valued by a small jeweller.

Jann - A Short Story Part 6

Last year Jann met Rick. Their friendship blossomed over their mutual interest in a Latin-American dancing class once a week. To a drink after Wednesday’s class was added a meal on Saturday nights, then the cinema on Mondays and by October Jann’s double bed occasionally had two occupants again.

As lust turned to love Jann became increasingly comfortable with Rick. She was perhaps aware that a distinct lack of trust had caused the break-down of her marriage and a couple of other relationships. Rick was different. Not pushy. Definitely a romantic at heart. She sometimes found flowers waiting for her when she got home from work. She was whisked away for weekends in the countryside – discovering at the last minute that the children’s weekends had also been taken care of with visits to school friends. Since the kids liked Rick that meant the world to Jann and, on one weekend away after a few glasses of wine, she trusted Rick with the details of the fraud she had been running.

Jann - A Short Story Part 5

Over the next few years she made several similarly bogus claims. Not being greedy she restricted her fraud to amounts of money she knew would remain uninvestigated. Most villains get cocky. Not Jann. She exploited all her near neighbours, although of course she intercepted the correspondence so none of them ever knew how much money they were making. She never used the same insurance company twice. Reaching the end of her list of neighbours she began to use addresses beyond the last house in various streets. And she misspelled the name ever so slightly each time. Companies using postcode-linked computer packages would simply assume a building programme. It was to Jann’s advantage that centralised insurance offices, based around call-centres, were many miles from her town. It would have been very unlikely for someone from the company to live in her town.

Jann - A Short Story Part 4

At the same time she informed her bank that she might be using her maiden name from time to time now her marriage was well behind her. The cheque arrived three days later. She took it to the bank and paid it in. The next day she destroyed all references and files for the policy held at the office. Premium two hundred and fifty pounds. Claim seven hundred and fifty pounds. Profit five hundred pounds. Holiday beckoned. All she had to do was look out for the renewal notice and cancel the policy on the grounds of a cheaper quote being obtained elsewhere. As the senior member of the office staff she knew her junior colleagues would ask her if they came upon any paperwork.

Jann - A Short Story Part 3

Eventually she knew that the only way to find out if it was flawless was to try it. She wasn’t a gambling woman; she genuinely couldn’t see the risk.

On a boring March morning, whilst drinking her second cup of coffee, she processed a new household contents proposal. It was just like any other household contents proposal except she had filled it out herself the night before. She included an ‘all-risks’ extension for a few items of mid-priced jewellery – one to five hundred pounds, used her maiden name and her next door neighbour’s address. She knew her neighbours’ insurers and so avoided them. And she processed it. Her cash became her company’s cheque.

Untraceable back to her. A fictitious policy for a fictitious person’s property. She ignored it for six months and then phoned through a claim; seven hundred and fifty pounds for two rings.

Jann - A Short Story Part 2

It is a nine-to-five job that Jann usually does from eight-thirty to six. She word-processes. She accounts. She premiums and she claims. Once upon a time she would have been called a clerk. Now all the staff are encouraged to call themselves Insurance Brokers. Jann has a piece of paper which she sweated for in her late twenties whilst raising the kids and coping with her ex-husband’s increasingly demanding drinks’ budget. It says ‘Jann Appleby ACII – Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute’ and of it she is rightly proud. She is a proper Insurance Broker.

Jann can’t tell you when she first had the idea for the scam but the trouble is that she had it. She had it and it was deliciously, delightfully devious. Better; it was undetectable. Had her idea involved some element of risk she would have left it alone. It didn’t, so she didn’t. She tried to leave it, but in the early hours of a summer morning, sleep over for the night, she would play around with the idea, looking at it from every angle, creeping up on it and trying to surprise it, but it remained obstinately central to her thinking. No matter how hard she prodded and poked this idea it still retained its shape. It worked.

Jann - A Short Story Part 1

The following short story has never seen the light of day before. It will appear in ten short parts over the next ten days.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury please retire to consider your verdict.

And listeners, for you to ponder, if the hero of the story is a villain and the villain gets caught is it a happy ending?

Jann isn’t much of a villain really. Single Mum. Forty – ish. Good mother. Good neighbour. Kind to animals. All her life she’s been honest, ever since her own Mum caught her stealing biscuits from her Gran’s pantry. She could still remember the telling off.

But honesty is relative. Jann isn’t honest as the day is long but certainly her morals reach the mid-afternoon. She has standards - take a pen or two from the office but hand a wallet in to the police if found in the street.

Jann works at the insurance brokers on the High Street. ‘Dobbin and Ferse’ they’re called although David Ferse has long since departed and even his son has retired. Somehow ‘Dobbins’ doesn’t have the businesslike dignity the retention of Mr Ferse’s name suggests.