The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

The estate agent laughed a pretty laugh. '˜Not until the contracts are completed, I'm afraid.'

'˜Oh, don't be afraid.' Billy took something from his pocket; it was wrapped in silver foil. '˜Something for you,' he said. '˜A present.'

'˜A present for me?'

'˜Just for you.'

The estate agent took the present and unwrapped it. It was a brightly coloured plastic something.

'˜What is it?' she asked, as she gave it a squeeze.

'˜It's called a pleaser,' said Billy. '˜Now let's get that champagne open, and then we can explore the master bedroom.'

Smart Hat

That's a smart hat, Billy,
A fine and bonny lid,
A tasteful piece of headwear,
You're sporting there, our kid.

You look like Humpty Gocart,
With all that canny brim,
And it's a rare old compliment
To say you look like him.

It really really suits you,
You know I wouldn't lie,
You cut a dashing figure, lad,
They'll cheer as you go by.

I only wish I had one
So I could wear it too,
And all the folk would say I looked
As half as good as you.

From an ingratiating follower of natty headgear

12

Hang on by your fingernails and never look down

RORSCHACH

(inventor of the ink blot)

The hat looked good on Billy, and so did the coat.

They suited him and he suited them. The chap at the tailor's remarked upon this and so did his assistant. They helped Billy carry his purchases out to his car. His new car, the one driven by the lady chauffeur.

The lady chauffeur who had, until recently, been an estate agent. They loaded Billy's buys into the boot and waved as the chauffeur drove him away.

'˜He really suits that car,' said the tailor chap, and his assistant agreed.

Billy sat in the back seat, tinkering with the CD player. In his opinion this car suited him very well. It was a definite cut above that belonging to the now defunct young man. It wasn't top of the range, but it was the best his lady chauffeur could afford. The car phone rang and Billy answered it.

'˜Barnes,' he said.

'˜Billy,' said the voice of Mr Dyke. '˜Settling in all right? Got yourself all sorted with a place to stay, I hear.'

'˜I'm fine,' said Billy.

'˜Splendid. Then it's time for you to go to work'

Billy's mother sat a long time in the shed talking to the lad who would be Woodbine. But she communicated no further details regarding the mysterious disappearance of the voodoo handbag. Evidently glad to have got the whispering side of it out of the way, she made a great deal of noise. Rattling flowerpots about and banging the walls of the shed with a shovel.

Eventually several neighbours came to complain, there was some unpleasantness and Billy's mum was forcibly evicted.

The lad who would be Woodbine sat and pondered. He had been offered a weekly retainer - a sum coincidentally equal to that of Granny's old age pension - to locate and return the handbag. And, he concluded, as he would remind his Holy Guardian Sprout some ten years later, the best way to go about this was to kill the two birdies with the single stone and seek out Billy Barnes.

And this he set about doing.

Now it has to be admitted (although not yet by him) that he was not exactly in the Billy Barnes league when it came to the matter of mental agility.

Here was a lad of good intention, hell bent on becoming a famous Private Eye, but not exactly, how shall we put it, gifted. He had read Hugo Rune and his Law of Obviosity, but he had not fully grasped all the principles.

When he left the shed, a month later, somewhat grey and sallow of face due to the restricted diet of uncooked potatoes, he had at least reached the conclusion that although the shed seemed a very likely candidate for the least most obvious of all least most obvious places for Billy Barnes to turn up handbag in hand (and therefore the most obvious place that he would), he obviously wasn't going to yet!

And so, perhaps, rather than risk starvation, it might be as well to begin the search elsewhere.

And as Brentford was as much of an elsewhere as anywhere else, and the lad had an uncle called Brian who lived there, then Brentford seemed as good a place as any to begin.

And so he, which is to say I, arrived upon my Uncle Brian's doorstep with a smiling face and a change of underwear. The year was 1977 and the date was 27 July. It was a Sunday and a sunny one at that.

Uncle Brian opened the door. He was a short man, Uncle Brian, positively dwarf-like. He wasn't Welsh, but then who ever thought that he was?

'˜Who is it?' asked Uncle Brian.

'˜It's me,' I said. .'

'˜Well, you never can be too careful, come in.

And I went in.

I had to squeeze past a lot of cardboard boxes that were blocking up the hall. '˜What do you have in these?' I asked my uncle.

'˜Rubber gloves. Would you care for a cup of something?'

'˜Tea would be nice.'

'˜Yes, wouldn't it?'

Uncle Brian led me into his front room. It had been stripped of all furniture and the floor was covered in cushions. '˜Having a party?' I asked.

'˜Sleeping,' said my uncle. '˜I sleep as much as I can, wherever I can. To sort out all the world's problems.'

'˜Top man,' I said. '˜If the people in power spent more time sleeping and less time trying to sort out all the world's problems, the world's problems would probably sort themselves out.'

'˜Have you been drinking?' my uncle asked.

'˜No,' I said.

'˜Well you should try it. I do, it helps me to sleep.'

'˜I see,' I said. But I didn't.

'˜You don't,' said my uncle. '˜But sit down, I'll explain.'

So I did, and he did.

'˜Dreams,' said my uncle. '˜The power of dreams. '˜Where do you think ideas come from?'

'˜You think them up,' I said.

'˜Yes, but where do they come from?'

'˜You think them up,' I said again.

'˜No, no, no,' said my uncle. '˜They have to come from somewhere. They don't just spontaneously appear in your head.'

'˜I think they sort of do. I think an idea is actually composed of lots of different other ideas that sort of give birth to it.'

'˜Cobblers,' said my uncle. '˜When you ask someone how they came up with a really amazing idea, they'll say 'њit just popped into my head'ќ or 'њit came to me all at once'ќ or 'њI had a dream'ќ or 'њI had a vision'ќ, or something similar.'

'˜So you're saying that ideas come from outside your head.'

'˜No, they come from inside. But from a different world inside, the world of dreams.'

'˜I don't think it's a different world,' I said. '˜I think that when you're asleep, your mind is sort of idling, and dreams are just jumbled-up information.'

Uncle Brian shook his head. '˜It's a different world, we enter it when we are asleep and dreaming. It seems weird to us because we are strangers there, we don't understand the laws that govern it. It's a world of pure idea, you see. Thought only, with no physical substance. Pure idea. Sometimes we bring a little of that back with us into the waking world. And pow, we have a new idea.'

'˜And that's what you're trying for?'

'˜Exactly. A big idea. Hence the dream surfing.'

'˜What is that, exactly?'

When you go to bed at night you set your alarm, '˜you need a digital one, you set it to go off at random times in the night to wake you up. Wake you up while you're dreaming. Break in on your dreams, see? Because normally, in the natural way of things, '˜you only wake up when a dream is over, and so you don't remember any of it. This way you'll hit a few dreams in the night, you wake up with a start and hastily write down whatever you can remember.'