Barnaby's Bigger Book of Shorts

By Barnaby Wilde

Forty coffee break sized stories (Volumes 1 to 4 of Barnaby's Shorts) in one collected volume. Ideal for the beach, in the bath, on the train to work, or, while taking your morning coffee. A mix of genres, including mystery, romance, sci fi and humour. Who are The Women Furies? Can you grow a man from a bean? Is it possible to rob a bank by accident?
Answers to these questions plus four tales from the Vertigo labs.
Can a man get trapped inside a Kindle? What would you do if you were stalked by the invisible man? and how did Amelia find her new man?
Forty stories in one book (previously published as four volumes)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnaby Wilde
• Release date: Aug 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301700479

Barnaby Wilde

Barnaby Wilde is the pen name of Tim Fisher. Tim was born in 1947 in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, but grew up and was educated in the West Country. He graduated with a Physics degree in 1969 and worked in manufacturing and quality control for a multinational photographic company for 30 years before taking an early retirement to pursue other interests. He has two grown up children and currently lives happily in Devon.

Book preview

The Monkey Faced Boy

I never had a problem getting up in the mornings. In fact, I used to think it was the best part of the day. Still do, I reckon Most days I'm still out of bed by four thirty. That's a.m. by the way just in case you're wondering. Yep, I know that's real early for most folks, but then, maybe that's part of the reason I like it so. There's no one else much around at that time of the day. Usually it's just me and a few birds.

There was always the odd car on the highway, of course. Busy folk's whizzing off to somewhere, or back from someplace else. Tired folks wanting to get home to bed, or else, rested one's off to do a day's work somewhere, but they didn't bother me. Once I'd breakfasted -- that was usually just a strong black coffee -- I'd make my way down to the depot to pick up my wagon. It's just a ten minute walk from where I used to live and I enjoyed that walk in summer, when the pavements were dry and the sun was just thinking about rising, just as much as in the fall, when everywhere was dark, damp and steaming, or the winter, whether it was cold and dry or streaming rain. There's something about walking the streets on your own, when all the other folks are still in bed asleep, or pretending to be asleep so that they can get another five minutes in the warm, that is truly liberating. I didn't care if it was light or dark, wet or dry, I used to love that walk to work.

I saw things too. Things that reg'lar folk don't get to see. There was often owls about, or foxes that didn't even bother to give me a glance. The birds are waking up too about then too, and in the spring it was almost deafening the sounds they made. One time I even saw a heron. A fat bastard, too, just standing in the middle of the street. I'm talking middle-of-the-town street, here, by the way. We're not talking about some little hick village in the country. I shouldn't think there's been a heron in these parts since they drained the swamp about a century ago to build this town in the first place. But there it was. A big, fat, grey streak, just standing, with it's great pointed beak turned to the side and one big eye watching me, as though it thought it could make itself invisible if it just stood still long enough. And when I got too close, it unfolded two huge wings and flapped off, lazy as you like. You wouldn't think they'd even get off the ground flapping as slow as that. Never seen one since. Not in the town, anyhow.

Anyway, I didn't tell you who I am. Name's Dixon. Don't know why. It's just what my momma and poppa decided to call me and I've never seen the need to change it. I used to work down at the town depot. Had done for near on twenty five years. Never saw the need to change that either. I guess you might say I didn't have no real ambition. Maybe that's true, but I got by. Never needed much, I guess. What did I do at the depot? Pretty much whatever they asked me to do. Sometimes, in the summer, it was mowing. Sometimes it was cleaning or clearing. In the fall it was leaves and bonfires. Occasionally we got to put out flags for some bigwig, or temp'ry fencing. Whatever was needed, I guess, to keep the town running right.

I did have one reg'lar duty, though, and it fit right in with my early mornings. In fact I can't remember now if I got the duty 'cos I was always up early, or if I was always up early 'cos I got the duty. No matter. It suited me and I suited it and that's about all that needs to be said.

Now, we don't have a problem in this town with graffiti like most other towns. Sure, we have plenty of kids with spray cans, but we don't have a problem with it, 'cos a long time ago we figured out how to deal with it. Now I can't say that this was my idea, but who ever had the idea had a good one. They reasoned that the kids sprayed paint over pretty much everything they could reach because they didn't have any proper place to 'express their creativity'. I'm sure that was the phrase they used, 'express their creativity'. So the town built them a place to do it that wouldn't bother no one. They built them a wall that wasn't nothing more than a giant canvas for them to 'express their creativity' on. They did stop short, though, of giving them the spray cans to do it with. Kids round here want to express their creativity, they gotta supply their own paint.

And it works, pretty much. Of course you get the odd kid who still wants to spray the side of the depot or the town hall, but we jump on them pretty hard. They usually get the message. You wanna spray? Then use the wall provided.

Where was I? Oh, yeh. Anyway, my job was to renew the wall. Every day, first thing, I picked up the truck from the depot and headed down to the wall to paint over the graffiti from the day before. That's the deal, you see. The kids get a nice fresh wall every day to paint on. It's a good size, too, and you can use both sides. Room for everyone to 'express their creativity'.

When I got down there each day, around five thirty, I sprayed over everything with white paint. It's quick drying. Within an hour you can paint on it again. I reckon I sprayed that wall so many times the paint must be about an inch thick by now.

Before I sprayed it, I usually liked to have a walk around the wall and take a look at what'd been put up the day before. Mostly it was just tags. Most of the kids don't have any imagination beyond spraying up their tag over and over. Mind you, some of them can be quite intricate. I'm not trying to knock 'em. If they just wanna spray their tag, well, hell, that's what the wall's there for. Of course you get some obscenities too, but not as much as you might imagine, and it's better here than on somewhere more important. And you get the destructive ones, too. No imagination of their own, so they just wanna spoil something that some other kid has done.

Every once in a while we get an actual piece of art A picture, a cartoon, a portrait whatever and sometimes they're pretty good. Some real talent. It was a shame to spray over them sometimes, but that's the deal. You get twenty four hours to use the wall, well twenty three I guess if you take off the drying time for the overspray. For twenty three hours you get a chance to show off your little work of art to the general public. Oh, I didn't tell you, this wall is in quite a public place. It's not hidden away in some little backwater. A lot of folk walk by here every day on their way to work, or going home, or heading for the shops. There's often folk pausing to see what might be new today.

Sometimes we get folk sticking posters on the wall. That I did not like. There's a sign that says 'bill stickers will be prosecuted', but as far as I know they haven't caught him yet. That's a joke by the way. Bill Stickers? Suit yourself. Anyway, I hated the folk who put up the posters because I had to scrape 'em off before I could spray. Sometimes that took longer than the spraying.

Anyway, one day I turned up as usual to spray the wall and I'm doing my little walk round first and I see the usual tags but I also see a picture. Some kid had painted a door onto the wall. It's about life size and it's just a picture of a door. I think that first one was blue if I remember right. He must have been there real early in the day, because there was tags and other stuff over spraying it in places. Anyway, I got to work with the spray and it got covered up with all the rest of the stuff as usual.

The next morning, when I went back, there it was again. Well, not exactly the same door, but a similar one in more or less the same place. I don't remember the colour of that one. And that's how it was for a while. Every day there would be a new door. Different colour. Different style. Different size maybe, but always in more or less the same position on the wall.

And over the weeks they got better. More realistic I mean. And the other strange thing was that the other kids started to leave the doors alone. They didn't just spray their stuff over the top. Like they were showing it a little respect or something. It got to be that the first thing I looked out for each morning when I arrived with the truck was what kind of door are we going to have today?

Some days they were very grand, like the entrance to a mansion or something, and some days they were the exact opposite, like a little old weathered door to an abandoned cottage. But they were definitely getting more lifelike. Maybe that should be more doorlike. I'm not sure if a door can be lifelike. Sometimes it seemed like a real shame to be over spraying them, but rules is rules as they say, so I just had to shrug and get on with it.

They began to get at me, though, and I found myself wondering at odd times of the day what door would be there in the morning, until it nagged at me so bad that I took to walking home that way in the evening to see the door instead of waiting 'til the next morning. I started wondering who was doing the painting, too. To begin with, I just assumed it was a local kid who couldn't do faces, so he did doors instead, but as the paintings got better and more realistic it became ever more puzzling.

Whoever it was, he obviously got there pretty early in the day because his door never intruded over anyone else's tags and I knew that plenty of the kids stopped at the wall on their way to school to do a bit of spraying, though I had a feeling that they were leaving him a space anyway. Like he owned that bit of wall and this was part of the respect thing.

The doors got more and more realistic and I took to walking round in my lunchtime, or deliberately making a detour when I was out with the truck to see what door we had today and, I guess, thinking that I might actually see him. The door painter.

The doors were getting so realistic that I couldn't see how he could do it with a spray can without taking all day and it began to bug me so much that I had to find out who the artist was. This kid, if he was this good, should be going to art college or something.

I figured he must be getting there pretty early in the day, probably before anyone else did any painting, so I took to hanging around a while to see if he'd show up. Well, I guess he must of not wanted to be seen, 'cos he never showed up while I waited, but by the next morning, sure enough there was a new door. The doors were getting so good now, that you'd swear they were real. There's a name for paintings like that and I went down to the library to find out what it was. It's called trompe l'oeil. According to the encyclopaedia, it's an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. (I copied that last bit out so as I got it exactly right, by the way). It's French, the words. It means deceiving the eye.

I began to get obsessed with the doors. I started to take my camera down there and photograph the doors before I covered 'em over and I always left spraying over the door until the absolute last. I put some of the door pictures on the internet and some French woman used a whole bunch of them to make the cover for a book. She emailed and said could she use 'em. Didn't want to infringe my copyright or something, but I said feel free. I didn't tell her where the photos came from. She prob'ly thought they were real doors.

I took to hanging around for longer and longer each day, until I got a warning about timekeeping from my boss. There wasn't any point in trying to explain it to him. All he knew about art was that it rhymed with fart. Anyway, one day I saw him. The kid I mean. I hid round the corner and just kept a look out and this small kid, with a backpack, appeared from somewhere. Honestly, I didn't see him arrive. One moment there was no one there and the next he was there already spraying in the outline.

I watched him spray in a base colour and then move in to put in layers of detail. He worked real fast. He never once stepped back to look at what he'd done, or hesitated like he didn't know what to do next. He just worked steadily on until it was finished. I nearly got my cards that day. Got called in to the boss's office and read the riot act about time keeping. Told me he couldn't understand why I'd gotten so unreliable lately. Gave me a written warning. Twenty five years and I got my first disciplinary warning. Gotta pull myself together, he said.

For the next week I just turned up in the morning, took the truck, did my walk around the wall and sprayed it down. Didn't hang about, just drove straight back to the depot. Didn't see the kid either. The doors just kept appearing, a new one every day. And every day more realistic than the day before.

I noticed that the other kids were keeping their tags well clear of his paintings. In fact they were pretty much keeping clear of that side of the wall entirely and putting all their own stuff on the back of the wall. No trouble with bill posters either on the clean side. Small groups of people took to coming along in the evening to see today's door and a fair few of them took photos. A local reporter tracked me down at home and asked me what I knew about the artist. I told him nothing. Wasn't difficult. I didn't know nothing to tell him. I'd just seen the kid that once. Didn't even get a real close look at him. He was small and had curly red hair. That's about all I knew. There were some photos and a headline in the evening paper talking about the 'mystery boy painter'. He even got a nickname of sorts. Doorboy. Not much of a nickname, but it was a nickname I guess.

I couldn't keep it up longer than a week, though. Found myself thinking about him all the time. Kept intruding on my work during the day and keeping me awake at night. What was his obsession with the doors? I knew I was going to have to wait for him again and ask him. Didn't wanna lose my job, though, so I phoned in sick after I'd sprayed the wall down one day. It was a green door that day. Don't know why I remember that, but it was like a Georgian front door, panelled, with stone columns either side and a half round, arched window above. The pillars looked so real you'd have sworn they were stone. I had to touch them to reassure myself that it was just a flat painting and that the kid hadn't sneaked in some real pillars somehow. He'd even painted in a brass letter box and door knob. The gleam on that doorknob, you'd swear it would turn if you got a hold of it.

Seemed like a real shame to spray it down, but I did anyway and then drove the truck round the corner and waited. He came along about forty five minutes later. It was only just after six a.m.. Still no one else about. Just like before I didn't actually see him arrive. Suddenly he was just there and the basic door shape was already painted. I watched him for about ten minutes. His speed was almost unbelievable. He was pulling cans from his backpack and spraying like someone possessed. I waited until he was almost finished and then walked over as quiet as I could.

Evidently not quiet enough. He turned towards me and stared for a second or two before discarding his empty spray can and taking off. I ran after him, but he was too quick for me and I lost him before I'd even crossed the square. But I saw his face and it was a face that you'd never forget. Under that red hair he had what I can only describe as the face of a monkey. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not just saying he was ugly, or anything like that. And I'm not saying it was a monkey. I'm just saying that there was something about his face and his eyes that was exactly like a monkey's face.

Did you ever see that film with Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter? Planet of the Apes? The one made sometime in the nineteen sixties, not one of those later remakes. The first one. Well, that's what he reminded me of. Roddy McDowall.

I won't ever forget that face, or the despair that I saw in those eyes.

And that was it. I never saw him again.

I walked back to the door he'd just finished painting. I couldn't help myself but touch it. Damn me if the paint wasn't already dry. It even felt like a door, not like the wall it was painted on. It was minutes before I remembered that I'd left my camera in the truck and I ran back to fetch it.

It can't have been more than a minute that I was away from the wall, but in that minute everything changed. When I got back to the wall dang me if the door wasn't ajar. Just a fraction. But I could swear he didn't paint it like that. When he painted it, it was just like every other day. It was a closed door. I'd swear to that in a court of law if I had to. On the bible, or on anything you like. That door was closed when I first touched it.

I couldn't help myself. It was just too bloody realistic. I reached out again and touched it again. …and the damn thing closed.

I swear to you. It was ajar, just a crack, and when I pushed it, it closed. And I swear to you, too, that as it closed I got just a glimpse of a meadow through the gap, with a blue sky and …

… and that was all. It was just a glimpse and then it closed.

Too late I remembered that I was holding my camera. I photographed the closed door, but that's all it was. Just a fantastically well painted picture of a front door. If you look at the photo, you'd swear it was an actual door. Shadows, reflections, the works. Just a painting of a door. Look, I've got it here, you can see for yourself.

The next day I was there even earlier. The door was still there, but I saw that the tags had reappeared on the door side of the wall. Worse than that, some joker had put his tag right across the door. I sprayed down the whole wall down and waited, but he never came back.

I'm still waiting. That's why I quit the job and it's why I stand here every day waiting for the graffiti to be sprayed off the wall and why every day I'm painting my own door. I'm getting better, I think, but the cost of paint is a problem, what with me not having a job no more.

So if you could see your way to dropping a few coins in the hat, lady, maybe I'll have enough money for paint and a fried breakfast today.

Thank you, madam. Thank you. That's very generous. I appreciate that. Thank you.

THE END

Barnaby Wilde July 2012

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The Holey Oak

I don't suppose anybody likes to see the death of a fine old tree, and the tree in Davey's field was all three of those things. Fine, old and, now, dead. That oak tree had probably been there for well over three hundred years and generations of folks had walked by it, sheltered under it, climbed up it, or carved their initials on it. More importantly, it had just stood there. A symbol of permanence and reliability. A focal point. A background. A rallying point. A meeting place. Hell, that tree was pretty much the most important spot in the whole village, I even proposed to my wife underneath it, but most days we'd just walk past without hardly noticing it. Until the day it fell over, that is.

Of course, everyone knew it was rotten, but then pretty much every tree that old is rotten in the middle. That's just the way of trees. But no one expected it to fall down. That old oak tree had stood up to three hundred years of storms, wind, rain, frosts and whatever. It had been snowed on, frozen and baked. It had probably been struck by lightning more time's than most and, to be sure it had a few dead branches and a big scar down one side, but still, we thought it'd be there forever. That's if we ever thought about it at all, of course.

Still, I guess everything has it's time. Part of the inevitable cycle of life, so they say. The only thing any of us can be sure of is that one day we're gonna die. I guess it was just the oak tree's time.

It wasn't even an especially big storm. Just one of the sort of gales you get in the fall. Perhaps the ground was bit softer than usual following the wet summer. Maybe the tree was carrying a bit more leaf than usual, or maybe it was just that it's time had come. Anyway, whatever the reason, that was the night Davey's oak died.

And you might pretty much think that would be about the end of it, a bit of a discussion point for a few days, a bit of clearing up, and a bit of a gap in the landscape 'til we got used to it. But that was the day that Davey's life changed forever. Well, I guess that life changed for all of us a little on that day.

No one knew where Davey came from. He'd just always been there. A cantankerous old man in an old cottage at the edge of the village with a few ramshackle sheds and a couple of fields. I suppose he must have been young once, but no one could remember when. Some folks said that there was once a mother, but she'd died so long ago no one could remember a great deal about her either. What's more, no one knew how Davey existed. He sometimes had the odd animal on his fields, but they weren't large fields and he was certainly no farmer. The hedges were unkempt, the ditches uncleared and the sheds falling down. He pretty much kept to himself apart from his essential shopping. He left other folks alone and other folks pretty much left him alone. There's probably a thousand like him all over the country. He wasn't that unusual.

Anyway, the day the old oak tree fell down a few folk paused from going about their business to look at the great trunk lying on the ground with it's broken branches and with it's roots pointing up to the sky. They swapped a few tales about climbing the tree as youngsters, or carving their names in the bark, or meeting their lovers there. Davey came out to inspect the damage, but he didn't waste a whole lot of energy passing the time of day with the dawdlers, just headed back off to one of his sheds for a chainsaw.

He cut off a few of the biggest branches, just so as he could get better access to the trunk, but then he decided to cut off the root. It took him a while to work round, but the tree being hollow an' all mean's his chainsaw blade was long enough for the job and pretty soon the whole root part fell away.

Now, I don't know exactly who it was who noticed it first. Betty, from the pub, says it was her, but Jim Bently swears it was him. No matter, pretty soon everyone knew about it and wandered down to see it for themselves. It weren't long afore there was quite a little crowd standing round the cut end of Davey's oak all expressing their own opinions. There was a few folk taking photos, too, mostly using the cameras in their mobile phones. Some of 'em was taking pictures of the tree and some of 'em was taking pictures of each other standing in front of the tree. At the beginning, Davey even stood by the tree hisself and let a couple of folk take pictures of him standing by it, but all the while he was thinking and he carried on thinking long after all the village folk had gone home for the night.

Now, I know I haven't told you yet what it was that Betty and all those other folk saw, but I'm coming to that. What those folk saw, or thought they saw, was that the shape of the dark stained rot on the cut white end of that tree trunk looked exactly like a portrait of Jesus. And I have to say that I seen it myself and it sure did look a whole lot like the pictures we used to have in Sunday School when I was a kid. In fact it was pretty damned realistic I would say. Almost three dimensional. Almost like the eyes were following you when you moved around.

And you would think that would be about that. Interesting. Curious to a degree. A talking point for a few days in the pub, but essentially, just a rotten oak tree that had fallen down in a storm with a pattern in the trunk that had a passing resemblance to Jesus. But Davey saw things different. Davey saw potential.

The following morning, the few folks who'd heard about the face of Jesus, but who hadn't seen if for their selves, wandered down to Davey's field for a look. They was disappointed, though, 'cos Davey had covered up the end of the trunk with an old tarpaulin. He'd also put up a painted sign, which said 'one pound to see the holey jesus'. Well, that provoked more discussion than the face itself had. There was some folk who said as he had no rights to charge for seeing one of nature's wonders and there was others said as it was his tree and his land and he could do pretty much as he wanted. They said it was called 'free enterprise'.

Anyway, a few of the folks paid up so long as they could take a picture of the tree, though most of 'em refused to pay an extra pound for Davey to be in the picture.

By the next day, Davey had put up a screen along the road to stop anyone getting a free look. He'd put up a new notice, too, that said 'car park one pound' and pretty soon he had a few cars parking in the field and paying their one pound plus another one pound to see the portrait. Over the next few days the numbers kept increasing. On the first day it was probably only about half a dozen cars, but by the third day the numbers were over twenty.

Davey noticed that a few of the people were picking up leaves off the tree or even breaking off twigs, so he put up a wire fence to stop 'em getting so close. He also put up another sign offering 'soovenirs from the holey tree' five pounds. He started putting bits of twig and leaves into polythene sandwich bags and signing small labels which said 'authentic soovenir from the holey tree' and to his surprise he sold a few.

By the end of the first week, the numbers of visitors had shown no sign of declining. In fact there was more of them every day. He'd had to put some markers into the field in order to get the visitors to 'park pretty' as he put it and he'd installed more fencing to direct the visitors to walk one way round the tree. The bags of 'soovenirs' were going well, too, but he noticed that the leaves were already beginning to dry out and drop.

On the following Monday the first TV crew showed up from the local breakfast programme, but after a long argument they were turned away. They wouldn't pay Davey's demands for an 'exclusive license' but they filmed anyway in the village and did a few interviews with the locals. Betty was happy to pose alongside her photo of the Jesus portrait. They cut in a few stock shots of standing Oak trees and also showed some other examples of 'Jesus images' from around the world. There was one from Mexico that claimed to show Jesus in a slice of toast, a couple of cloud shots vaguely resembling Jesus and even a family claiming to have seen Jesus' image inside the lid of a jar of marmite (that's vegemite to some of you). It seems that images of Jesus have been popping up all over the place. As though Jesus has nothing better to do than leave his tag everywhere like some kind of religious teenager with a can of spray paint.

But it had to be admitted, even though the film crew didn't get that close, that Davey's image of Jesus was more convincing than most of the others.

Well, the following day there was cars queuing down the lane to see Davey's Holey tree. The pub stayed open all day with the extra business and Davey had to offer to pay a couple of local kids to manage the car park and take the money at the entrance.

Over the next few weeks he improved the fencing and even put up some crude stands with scaffolding to give folks a better view.

The leaves had pretty much all gone, though, and he was running short of small twigs, so he brought in the chainsaw and began cutting up a couple of the larger branches. Sales of 'woodchips from the Holey Tree' went well, even though the price had gone up to eight pounds a bag. He was even selling small bags of sawdust as 'Holey Tree animal bedding' for two pounds a bag.

Davey had the idea to make small crucifixes out of some of the wood chips. These proved to be very popular at fifteen pounds a go and sales of souvenir postcards were going well, too. He rigged up another tarpaulin and got a couple of local women in to do teas and coffees and was quick to catch on to requests for water and started to sell bottles of 'water from the Holey Tree source', which almost got him into trouble with the local Trading Standards, who insisted that only the Pope could designate the tree as Holy, until Davey pointed out that his was a tree with a hole, a holey tree, and that he wasn't making any other claims. He wasn't so lucky with the water supply company who said that he no license to extract and sell water. He argued that the source was only his kitchen tap, but they wouldn't listen.

Still the numbers of visitors continued to grow. The car park field was getting pretty churned up, as was the path the pilgrims, (he was starting to think of them as such), were taking around the tree. He had to lay cinder roads and paths, which roused some interest from the Planning Agencies, who insisted he needed to apply for a change of use for the land, which was zoned as 'agricultural'. When Davey showed the pale faced young man from Planning and Building Control his shotgun, though, he quickly withdrew. Davey later insisted that the gun was never loaded and, anyway, he was only showing him the gun as an 'interesting antique'. Fortunately no one enquired whether he had a license for said 'antique'.

A museum offered to buy the tree trunk, or at least a slice showing the portrait, and Davey negotiated a good price. He spent a whole evening slicing a segment off the end of the tree and was relieved to see that the image persisted through to the remaining trunk, like lettering through a stick of rock, though maybe not quite so perfectly detailed.

Clearly news of the sale of the slice to the museum spread through whatever network it is that museums have for spreading that kind of news and Davey was able to slice off and sell four more pieces. By the time the fourth slice had been cut off, though, even Davey had to admit that it was starting to look a little less like Jesus than it had in the beginning. In fact it was starting to resemble John Lennon more than a little. At least he'd have a fall back business, he thought, if the Jesus thing started to decline. He decided not to sell any further slices though.

The tree was now considerably smaller than it had been when he started. Several of the big branches had gone entirely in the manufacture of the crucifixes, though demand was higher than ever. Davey could see, though, that at this rate there'd be nothing left by Xmas.

The prices for admission and parking went up, as well as a ban on photography in the hope of boosting postcard sales. The café had expanded to include 'a Holey Tree breakfast' and 'a Holey Tree cream tea'. Although he had little knowledge of what exactly it was, Davey was persuaded to pay for the setting up of a website on the internet and demands for the 'Holey Tree Crucifix' went through the roof. Davey now had two local carpenters making them as fast as they could. Despite his exhortations to use less wood in each cross, there was no doubt that the wood supply was rapidly diminishing.

Davey was a transformed man. No longer unshaven and unkempt, he was now every inch the businessman. The hedges and ditches were trimmed and tidied and flower borders dug round the edges of the car park. The fences and stands round the 'Holey Tree' were smart and sturdy and the café had been upgraded to a semi permanent building. A picnic area and small play area for the children was added, as well as a petting area (one pound per child) with one sheep and one goat.

Still the numbers of visitors continued to increase, though the tree trunk was starting to crack as the wood dried out. There was now a shelter over what remained of the main trunk to keep the public dry during their visit. The portrait looked more than ever like John Lennon as the timber aged and the stain began to fade in places.

Davey began to worry that his cash cow had a limited life. In particular the supply of wood for the crucifixes was now getting critical. If he cut any more of the large branches off the tree he would have to start advertising it as the 'Holey Log' instead of the 'Holey Tree'.

The whole enterprise very nearly went pear shaped when Davey was accused of repainting the portrait with creosote to restore the 'Jesus' factor, but he was able, just, to talk his way out of it by saying that he was merely applying colourless preservative to maintain the wood and prevent any further deterioration. He knew he'd have to be more careful, though, in future.

And that's about the end of the story, really. What's that? Oh, yes, he's still in business. It's true that the number of visitors has dropped off a bit recently, but the sales of the crucifixes are still going strong, especially the internet sales.

The wood supply? Well, that's the truly amazing thing. It never did run out. Perhaps that was the true miracle of the 'Holey Tree', though some do say that sometimes, at the dead of night, they hear the sounds of a truck delivering something at Davey's yard. Davey say's nothing, of course. He's as cantankerous as ever, but no one in the village would want to shut down a business that's brought so many extra visitors.

We planted twenty more oaks this year around the village green. Don't suppose any of them will turn out to be miracle trees, but I guess it'll be another three hundred years before anyone knows.

THE END

Barnaby Wilde July 2012

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Tiny Aliens

I don't remember the year exactly, but I guess it must have been sometime around 1949 or 50. I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. Or maybe I was only twelve. I don't remember that clearly now. Anyway, I do remember that it was very hot that summer, but then every summer seemed to be hot when we were kids. Don't know what's gone wrong with the weather these days. Used to be a time when winter was winter and summer was summer. Seems to me that there's hardly a difference now.

Anyhow, the whole world was different in those days. Kids were allowed to be kids and in the summer we just used to go out and roam about all day, doing the kind of things that kids were supposed to do, which, essentially, consisted of doing the things we'd been told not to do and hoping that we didn't get caught doing it. Or, maybe it was the other way round. Maybe it was not doing the things that we'd been told to do. I forget now. Anyhow, as long as we didn't make too much mess, too much noise, or too much nuisance of ourselves, we were pretty much free to roam provided that we came home