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and I see eye to eye on is religion, any religion.

  ‘He’s a bit rude, isn’t he, father?’ Simon said.

  ‘I’m sure he means well,’ his father replied. I sneezed loudly, twice. ‘Bless you, my son. And remember, believe in the Lord and you shall be cured.’

  ‘That’s a paraphrase,’ I remarked disinterestedly after blowing my nose. They turned to go. ‘Oi, what about your present?’ Mummy turned and looked at me patiently.

  ‘Thank you, but giving presents is a pagan custom, despite the gifts of the Three Wise Men,’ she said. ‘And we don’t want to encourage paganism, do we?’

  ‘Why did you bring Simon here in the first place, then?’ I snarled.

  ‘Well, for the magic of it all, of course, she replied. ‘And anyway,’ she added looking me up and down, ‘you’ve contaminated it.’ She waved cursorily at the gift.

  I sneezed loudly again and threw the water pistol into the hospital box. I got quite carried away with the idea of leading an army of Druids against the usurping proselytites and their quisling Vicars. Then I felt the urge again. I asked Mrs J to close the Grotto for ten minutes while I attended to more urgent needs.

  When I returned to the Grotto I was surprised to find that the Vicar had returned. He had an inanely serene look on his face. I sat on my throne and tried to appear as bad tempered as possible.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking,’ he began and then waited for me to be polite, too. ‘No, quite,’ he simpered. ‘The thing is, I was wondering, if you’re better of course, whether you would play Santa Claus at our Sunday school party?’

  I glowered at him. ‘I have my coven on Sundays,’ I snarled with uncharacteristic nastiness,

  ‘Oh well,’ he shrugged, ‘no harm in asking, is there?’

  I had quite surprised myself. I’d sounded almost like the Admiral himself. What was happening to me? Was some malignant force taking me over?

  I was sneezing violently as Brian ambled over and took a sheet of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it to reveal the plan for the set, perfect in every detail.

  ‘But how…’ I began and was then lost for words. He explained that he’d gone into the Arts Centre the day before and measured everything up. Was it the sort of thing I was after? I was so delighted that I quite forgot my stomach upset. He added that he’d already arranged some of the props and the rest shouldn’t be too much trouble to sort out. Brian, Rowena notwithstanding of course, is the light of my life at the moment.

  I noticed three youngsters, miniature Harrys, clustered around the Airfix stand stuffing tubes of polystyrene cement into their pockets. I gave Brian a nudge and pointed them out to him. He straightened his uniform and ambled over to them. I assume he’s on some sort of productivity bonus.

  I noticed that the more I sneezed, the more the children, under parental orders, kept their distance. I enjoyed lobbing their gifts to them and wondered if I could maintain the illness until the end of my engagement.

  One who didn’t keep her distance was Louise. Dressed in homespun cloth, like her mother, with homemade shoes and accessories, she might have stepped straight out of the Dark Ages. She didn’t mind if I had a cold because they lived in the country and were self-sufficient and so never got colds. They never washed either, by the look of them and despite my bunged-up tubes, I could still smell the goats and chickens and whatever else they had wandering in and out of their front door.

  ‘Don’t you think there’s a lot of waste in this world?’ she asked and before I could reply she was talking again. ‘That’s why daddy’s on the dole, because he says he doesn’t want to waste his time working. He meditates mostly; that’s when he’s not telling mummy which bits of the garden need digging, or weeding. He’s a terrific gardener. Actually he’s a writer really, a sort of poet, that’s why he meditates so much. Sometimes he writes a whole poem, but he has to meditate for weeks for that to happen. Do you like my jumper? Mummy made it. First she had to shear the sheep, daddy told her how to do it, then spin the wool, she knew that bit. Then she dyed it with onion skins and things. Isn’t she clever?’

  The colour reminded me of something I’d seen recently, but I couldn’t put a name to it.

  ‘Do you milk your reindeer? I hope you don’t eat them. We never eat meat. Mummy and daddy say it’s cruel and anyway it’s bad for you, all those toxins and things. You know the little garden outside the elves’ house?’

  I nodded and noticed that mummy was doing a very good impression of being asleep on her feet.

  ‘It’s terribly overgrown. You should clear it and use the reindeer manure on it, then you could grow lots of lovely vegetables to eat. We make all our own things. Daddy even makes his own beer. Next year mummy’s going to plant lots of barley so we can make our own malt. She’s very good at threshing; she did our whole wheat crop last year while daddy was away on a meditation course. Actually this friend of ours, the one who knows all about alternative medicine, says the forces in daddy’s liver are unbalanced. That’s another reason why he meditates so much, to balance his liver.’

  She nudged me and asked me if I was awake. I told her that I was fascinated and that I was only meditating.

  ‘Do you take vitamin pills? We do, lots and lots every day. We buy them from the health shop. I go to this alternative school where I’m learning to discover myself through creative play. It’s great fun. The teachers meditate a lot. I can’t read yet, but they say it will happen naturally by the time I’m about fifteen. And anyway, I’m not sure I want to learn to read if all those trees have to be cut down to make books. You are asleep! I think your forces are unbalanced. You should try meditating.’

  I grunted.

  ‘We don’t like the city much, but we sometimes have to come to see mummy’s and daddy’s friends. They’ve all got ulcers and television and two cars and things like that. Actually they’re something called ‘A’ type personalities. Not really sure what that is ‘cos I haven’t learned the alphabet yet.’

  ‘Doomed,’ I said drowsily.

  All the time she was wriggling and squirming and her eyes were darting from one thing to another. I wondered if her hyperactivity was due to something she was eating, or not eating, perhaps. Perhaps she’d inherited an unbalanced liver, or something.

  ‘Would you like some of my home-made muesli bar? Mummy makes them with nuts and whole grains. We make the yoghurt in them too, from goat’s milk. Don’t you think it’s awful about all those chemicals all over the place? Mummy and daddy say it’s no wonder people are dying all the time when they eat so much junk. Everything we eat is bio-dynamic. Daddy says he wants to be composted when he dies. Wake up!’

  A simple child

  That lightly draws its breath

  And feels its life in every limb,

  What should it know of death?

  She was a lovely child with a delightful smile. But, in spite of her energy, she was thin and pale. I wondered what the future held in store for her. I thanked her for the muesli bar and offered her a set of coloured pens.

  ‘Oh, no, thank you. They’re toxic and we don’t use anything like that. We use all natural colours, like charcoal.’

  I could see it under her fingernails and wondered if I should pass her on to Brian for a session with the matchsticks. Mummy had been meditating all this time. She yawned as they walked away. Little Louise turned and gave me a delightful wave.

  Coloured pencils to hospital.

  I had a very light lunch on account of not wanting to push my luck with the old stomach – a moderate portion of rice pudding and a mug of weak tea with lots of sugar. I wondered if the rice was gastro-bionic, or whatever the term was.

  It was a very quiet afternoon during which I managed to meditate with one eye open on the look-out for the patrolling Bull. Brian was actually quite busy with shoplifters, but I noticed he rarely marched them off to the Bull’s office, preferring to give them a good talking to
instead. He even took one toughie round the back of the Lego display and gave him a gentle cuff round the ear with his glove before sending him on his way. I hope he doesn’t get done for assault.

  I travelled home with him on the Central Line and discovered him to be quite a philosopher. He didn’t like being in security, but it was all he could get after retiring from the fire brigade. We got talking about children and young people. He maintained that it didn’t matter how hard you were on them – up to a point – just so long as you were fair.

  ‘The difficult part is, of course, convincing them that you are being fair. Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes.’ he quoted. ‘Defoe, I think,’ he added. He handed me the plan for the set as he got off the tube.

  I couldn’t face the Hs, so went straight to the Arts Centre where I had a little something to eat. The stomach seemed to have recovered remarkably thanks to the ministrations of Harridges’s nurse. So, I was just left with the cold. Although I didn’t know it, tonight would be ladies night. As I checked the set plan on the stage, the Company arrived in dribs and drabs, Miss Neave first.

  ‘I simply cannot play the part of this policewoman,’ she announced haughtily without even saying hello.

  ‘But why not?’ I asked. ‘It’s made for you.’

  She opened her script and pointed. ‘There!’ she said, pushing it at me.

  ‘But I can’t see the problem,’ I said.

  ‘Well really!’ she huffed. ‘If you can’t recognise an offensive word when you see one…’

  ‘There’s nothing offensive about ‘fuck’,’ I said. ‘It’s entirely in context and, I might add, lends colour to the character, tells us something about her background and the atmosphere she works in,’

  ‘She’s a policewoman, not a madam,’ she replied as if she were addressing an idiot.’

  ‘Even the police say things like that at times, you know,’ I informed her. They’re not perfect.’

  ‘Well I’ve never heard any police talk like that.’

  ‘Do you know any police?’ I asked.

  ‘I happen to be very great friends with the Chief Constable,’ she replied, adding that she simply would not say that word.

  ‘But it’s not you saying it, it’s the character,’ I explained.

  ‘It’ll be coming out of my mouth, ‘she said. ‘No, I’m quite adamant,’ she said finally as she clasped her hands firmly behind her back and stared defiantly into the distance.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ I said, just as firmly, ‘we’ll just have to find someone else to play the part and you can sell the programmes, Miss Neave.’

  ‘Oh, but I thought we could change it,’ she said, more than a little deflated.

  ‘No, it’s in the script for a reason and it stays in. If you want the part, Miss Neave, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to say it and that’s that. Ah! Mr McGregor!’ What a relief it was to see him. I left Miss Neave boiling with indignation.

  I was onstage arranging some props when Miss Pickering appeared upstage left holding an open copy of the script and biting her lip. She had been cast in the role of a saucy maid who had been sent by the agency to ‘do’ for the Vicar after his daily resigns having discovered him on the sofa with Helga. The explanation given for this compromising situation consisted of a series of lascivious double-entendres beginning with the Vicar’s line; She was only trying to help me up, Mrs Harris. We are definitely not talking Christopher Marlowe here.

  I was beginning to develop an instinct for trouble and I could feel her nervously edging closer. In an effort to forestall what I knew was going to be another difficult situation I hailed Mr McGregor again and climbed down from the stage to speak to him. Instantly she shot back into the wings and