Archive Hour Presents: Britain's Got Weevils with Alfonso The Weevil

Author's note: This story predates the current unfortunate mystery involving the disappearance of Alfonso The Weevil, and is included for curiosity purposes only.

I was having a long and pleasing dream involving Fiona Bruce and a potholing holiday in the Cairngorms, when gradually, Fiona's pleasant blandishments on the subject of corrective nipple surgery became drowned out by the sound of the most unholy torture. I came, drifting over the gentle waves of Lethe, to believe that donkey had been stapled to a pair of mating foxes, and the unfortunate trio slowly dragged through a wood chipping machine.

However as the noise became so acute that it looked even Fiona might ruffle a hair in that perfect coiffure, I woke up to find that in fact Alfonso was practising the violin on my chest.

"Alfonso", I said, looking at the clock, "it's four thirty in the morning."

"Just tell me what I've got", he demanded.

"Insomnia?" I volunteered, but he prodded me in the clavicle, with his special weevil bow, strung with purest My Little Pony tail hair.

"No, tell me what I've got"

I tried to go back to sleep.

"Tell me!"

The things I have to do to get a decent night's sleep.

"All right, Alfonso. You've got talent."

"Yes! I knew it!" He bounced off my chest. "And you", he said, "are queuing with me outside the Apollo from 7 tomorrow."

"But it is tomorrow Alfonso..."

****

We did not make it on stage till the very end of the day. The judges and we had endured what could best be described as a parade of inmates on day release from Dr Moreau's Island. And that was just the audience. As for the acts there was the purportedly talking cat which literally shat on the mat, the special needs transvestite who could sing the whole of ”Fiddler On The Roof” backwards but nothing else, and the class of schoolchildren in fluorescent cycling garb performing synchronised sewing.

It was late, and the theatre was stifling hot, and the atmosphere in the auditorium was brooding, hostile, restless, like a boxing match in its final moments. A perfect atmosphere for introducing a new performer.

Alfonso strode on, clutching his violin.

The man with black hair and white teeth yawned and said with magnificent disinterest

“So Alfonso, tell me, what’s the ambition? Where do you want to be in five years time?”

Straight off the bat, Alfonso replied

“I would like to be as big a star as James Galway was in the mid-Eighties.”

“But he played the flute”, said the man. “And you’re holding a violin.”

Alfonso did a little wiggle. “Yeah, we’ll see about that, Simon!”

The audience bayed like hyenas over a rotting bone.

Alfonso began to play, on the violin, the delightful hiking song from Cabaret, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”, over a drum and bass backing track.

Six hours later, when he had finally finished the various remixes and alternative endings, he took a short bow, to utter silence.

“That was”, said the man, “the worst thing I have ever heard in my life.”

And for once, I had to agree with him.

But later, on the night bus home, Alfonso was not remotely downcast. Far from it, he was leaping about the seats like a mad thing. “Look at this! Look at this!” he kept yelling, brandishing his iPhone. “15 million hits on YouTube already! Just think of the franchising opportunities! Weevil cookware and fashion ranges, here we come baby!”

So, dear reader, I squashed him. But he’ll be back….

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Six

Outside it was a beautiful spring day, the pale blue sky above dotted with the merest wisps of white cloud. As Chet bounced merrily along, his eye was drawn to the sparrows and pigeons leering at him from behind the relative security of the park railings; but he reminded himself that whilst it appeared to him the kind of perfect day just designed to be spent in a leisurely outdoor killing spree, that perhaps somewhere else underneath the huge blue sky, a safe was being sliced open with an electric power saw, elsewhere still a stiletto was being twisted under someone’s ribs in a crowded medieval street, and hopefully even further elsewhere a fully loaded passenger plane was just seconds away from disaster , ready to explode down out of it and wreck the peace for everyone. No, he firmly told himself, a cat detective’s work was never done, and there would be other sunny days, and other parks.

If the gentle rays of the spring sun had bestowed some carefree sense of unlimited possibility upon the young Chet, they had clearly not penetrated the penumbra of Tony’s Brasserie-Bistro, 112 The Street, City Village. Nor indeed, the furrowed, furry brow of its eponymous maître de, who stood glowering in the gloom of the staff entrance, situated down a shady side street, along with some overflowing catering bins and squashed cardboard boxes.

Tony, who was Bulgarian, had the permanent upturned mouth of a Frenchman, with a very French cigarette dangling flakily out of the corner. Chet wrinkled his nose. He hated any kind of cigarette which wasn’t Turkish with a passion. Unfortunately, it appeared Tony hated any kind of detective who wasn’t human with a passion.

He took one look at Chet, spat the remains of the cigarette out and smeared it under his shoe, before smoothing his greasy hair down, and wiping his hands on his burgundy waistcoat.

“I don’t like cats”, he said. “Cats are not good for ze business. Ze say you catch mice, but –“ he shrugged his shoulders, “all you do all ze day long is drink cocktails and solve ze stupid mysteries no one else cares about.”

He turned to go back in but found his way blocked by a very definite paw.

“Oh yeah?” said Chet. “Well I’ll tell you what also isn’t good for business. A blocked fire exit, a kitchen full of imported Bulgarian bush meat masquerading as organic chicken, enough rats to put the Pied Piper out of business, and a surprise visit tomorrow from the Environmental Health- that’s what’s bad for business. And since you’re asking, mine’s a milk and champagne on the rocks. Now move it.”

Tony didn’t need much more encouragement, but just in case he did, Chet prodded him along with his gold can opener, wittily engraved on the back –“To Chet- I didn’t kill no-one guv XX Curiosity”

“How deed you know all zat?” grumbled Tony, vigorously pumping the cocktail shaker from side to side, “You never been ere before.”

“A cat sees many things”, said Chet mysteriously. And then, less mysteriously “Especially when you leave all your illegal meat packaging out in an alleyway, standing in a fire exit, with a rat crawling around your ankles”.

“What rat?”

“Nothing”, said Chet, wiping his lips innocently.

TO BE CONTINUED...

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Five

For a moment, the man looked quite downcast, almost crumpled - as if he was about to implode in upon himself. But he drew in a sharp breath, and recovered with a fury.

“Well you clearly don’t think that I am the person who I think I am. I think that I am the person I think I am, and if you don’t think that, you clearly don’t know what you’re thinking.”

Chet, the cat who was also a detective said, “I can see what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.”

“In that case, I need waste no more of my time or yours. Good day to you, sir”.

With that, the man tipped his loden at Chet, yanked open the door behind him, and as the little bell tinkled gaily, walked straight into a rusted garage door.

“Sorry”, said Chet, “you have to leave by the way you came in... through the kitchen...sorry about the mess.”

The man didn’t say anything, but pushed past the cat and his desk, bounded up the stairs, and was gone.

The basement office was at peace once more, and as the dust gently settled over his desk in the beam of the solid gold angle poise lamp (inscribed around the base with the note “To Chet- one helluva’ an adversary. Find me! Macavity”), the world’s greatest detective marvelled once more at the vanity of humans.

“And to think”, he said to himself, “that they actually believe time is theirs to waste.”

He curled up into the shape of a comfortable furry kidney, and was about to settle down for a hard day’s nap, when something caught his eye. In his fluster and hurry to leave, the man had not noticed something fall out of his pocket onto the floor. Something small and white ...a matchbox.

Chet picked the box up and examined it carefully.

“Hmm”, he said to himself, as he was wont to do when there were no other characters around to help him vocalise the narrative link formulating in his head, “Tony’s Bulgarian-French Brasserie Bistro, 112 The Street, The City Village.”

It could have been anything. It could have been unintentional advertising by his previous visitor in exchange for a commission. It could have been a red herring, or what cats preferred to call a blue chocolate, as red herrings invariably ended well for them. It could possibly have been a clue.

“But in the end”, he mused, “what it mainly is, is a good place to start”.

He grabbed his hat, his raincoat, and his can opener, placing it firmly in his holster. You see, cat detectives never need to carry crude armaments like guns, or coshes, or blades. But you will never see any self respecting cat private investigator without a can opener, for obvious reasons. And as shall become clear, Chet’s was no ordinary can opener.

Dressed and armed, he took one look around the office, opened and shut a filing cabinet drawer for effect, and in the flip of a flap, was gone.

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The Case of Chet Millerby And The Missing Weevil- Chapter 4: Man Interrupted

The man took a long draught of his milk and champagne cocktail, and launched into a lengthy description of a Weevil Calling Ceremony.

He had just begun to describe the famous incantatory dance, where participants jig up and down around a circle of hot rocks, all the while chanting the words which have been handed down from generation to generation of Weevil Callers-

"Ohhh Roger Moore-oh! Ohhh Roger Moore-oh! Ohhh Roger Moore-oh!
Safari suit and a martini! Safari suit and a martini!"

- when Chet put a paw up to signal him to stop.

"Sorry", said the man. "Am I boring you? A lot of people find that's their favourite bit."

"Oh no", said Chet, "Quite the contrary. You were being most entertaining. But I think I've heard quite enough."

The man flushed, and a jolt of electricity seemed to pass through his eyes.

"Enough? But I haven't told you anything yet- not about the calling ceremony going wrong because my father hadn't brought the right Katchagoogoo mix tape, the Weevil escaping- "

Chet smiled, and twiddled his gold pencil idly. A small motto ran down the side, reading "To Chet - The only real top cat in my life XXX Dibble".

"You have told me more than enough." He looked down at his notes. "You told me about crows which how, when they clearly do nothing of the kind - they caw. You described beetroot wine as red, when it is always a deep kind of purple, or beetroot colour in fact. And you gave your father yellow eyes, when no-one has yellow eyes, apart from cats." And he flashed his, by way of emphasis.

The man folded his arms, a little belligerently, Chet thought. He was good at noticing things like that; he was after all, the best cat detective in the world.

"Are you critiquing my story telling style or my facts?" he demanded.

"Both", said Chet. "I will gladly give you a written report of my full analysis, for just £19.95, but first- why don't you tell me who you really are?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Three

The man began to speak, but was so nervous that his lips and tongue had quite dried out, and he found himself struggling to get the words out.

“Perhaps I could offer you a drink”, suggested Chet, the cat who was also a detective. “I’m afraid I only drink milk or champagne, or if you really want to push the boat out, I could make you one of my milk champagne cocktails.”

The man gratefully accepted the offer of the latter, and while Chet busied himself with a gold champagne whisk (the handle of which was engraved “To Chet – Every time I get in a kayak I think of you XXX Pinky”) and his churn of fresh Jersey milk, his guest began to talk.

“I was born in a small village in a country you will never have heard of. We lived on the side of the mountains, at the edge of a dark wood, and my father was a woodcutter. It was a simple life which we shared with a few pigs and goats. The very first day after I was born, my mother decided to dandle me on her lap while she sewed a tapestry depicting an ancient turkey hunt. The legend on the tapestry was a song, which went-“

“When I said tell me your story”, said Chet evenly, sipping on his cocktail , and beginning to regret ever letting this ludicrous figure into his office, “I meant the relevant parts, Mr- I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

The man told him his name, and Chet scribbled something down on a pad, but still it made no sense.

“I’m sorry- to cut to the chase. It was the morning of my seventeenth birthday, the traditional coming of age day in our country. The sun was not yet up, but I was woken by the crows howling outside my window, and my father pushing open the bedroom door, only a fraction of his grizzled face illuminated by the sickly tangerine light of the dying candle grasped in his hand. ‘Come’ he said, ‘it is time.’ I did not question him, but hurriedly pulled on my boots and followed him down the stairs. Outside he thrust a staff into my hands, and we set off up the muddy track into the forest. It had rained during the night, and the earth beneath our feet was moist, and as we brushed against the spiky fir branches, they showered a thousand droplets over us, and by the time we reached the top of the mountain we were both soaking wet. My father did not say a word for the entire walk, but occasionally passed me small crusts of bread torn from the loaf in his knapsack. We emerged from the narrow path onto a small plateau, still encircled by shadowy dense pine trees, although a faint winter sun was beginning to break over the horizon. My father sat down and patted the rock next to him, but still being the obedient son, I squatted in the dirt at his feet. He took a flask of red beetroot wine out of his sack, and pouring a stream onto the ground, rinsed his hands in it as was the tradition, then blessed me three times. Then he fixed me with his old yellow eyes, which had seen so much, and said – “Boy, do you know of the Weevil?”

Here the man paused for a restorative gulp of his curdling cocktail, and Chet paused scribbling for a moment. “Is all this of any use?” the man asked.

“Oh yes”, said Chet, “of great use, of very great use indeed.” And he smiled his distinctive grin, which was not like the grin of the Cheshire Cat, him being a Siamese , but narrower, and much slier.

The man pressed on. “I confessed that I had heard the tales in the school yard, and had often wondered what the primitive tattoo of a small grey beetle on his inner left wrist could signify. My father grunted in satisfaction, and with his stick, drew a circle in the sand. The Weevil Calling Ceremony had begun.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chet Millerby And The Case Of The Missing Weevil: Chapter Two

Chet Millerby, the cat who was also a detective, narrowed his eyes.

Without taking them off the man in the lederhosen, he pulled open the top right drawer of the desk, slid out a packet of Sobranies, lit one with his heavy gold lighter (engraved “To Chet- Here’s To Madagascar! XXX Tabitha”), and took a long, cool drag on it.

Nobody spoke. The smoke made the man want to cough, but he suppressed it. Upstairs, they could faintly hear the sound of the painter/professor tripping over the dead potted bamboo on the landing, which he did every day, and cursing, which he also did every day.

Time passed. Chet took another drag on his cigarette, and looked at his claws.

“A weevil, you say?”

“I didn’t steal him!” The man began to bluster. “He found me of his own accord. I just came down to breakfast one morning, and there he was, bold as the new born day, tucking into some broiled eggs and Welsh coffee - right on my laptop, would you believe!”

“You know weevil smuggling was outlawed under the United Nations declaration 103a?”

“Yes, but, I didn’t-“

“You know that weevil smuggling carries the highest possible penalties?” Chet stood up. He really was a very big cat- for a Siamese. “You know, that as a licensed cat detective, I am obliged to report all illegal weevils found on the mainland to the authorities?”

“I know all this, but I swear to you- I know nothing. He just turned up. They never even heard of weevils in the village. I have never even met a wood demon. I don’t even know how to transport a weevil in the silk lining of a top hat. I swear!” He began to tap his leather clad thighs nervously with the feather from his loden, whistling a grim folk tune of Bavarian provenance for comfort. Chet let him hang. The man took out a stick of wild boar bratwurst from his satchel and began to chew chunks off like his life depended on it.

“You’re not from round here, are you?” said Chet.

“Damn, you’re good”, said the man, with his mouth full. “Is it that obvious?”

“To a trained cat detective, nothing is obvious”, said Chet. “Eliminate all the possible theories, and then start with the impossible. It’s always bound to be the answer.”

“Listen”, said the man in the lederhosen, with tears in the corners of his eyes. “Just find him. If you find him, then I promise to come clean, and file the necessary paperwork. Or do time, whichever is quicker. But you must find him!”

Chet put out the cigarette, and went to the window, yanking up the blind with a noisy flourish. It was the same view, as ever, an unlit concrete wall. But that was what you got with a secret underground office in someone’s cellar. That was just the way it was, and he knew that. He was, after all, a cat detective. And the best one.

He spun round. “Well, it looks like you’re in luck. It seems nobody wants to steal diamonds or stab heiresses this week, so I might just have an opening for a missing weevil investigation.” The man threw himself at his feet, but Chet shook him off.

“You’d better start by telling me your story.”

TO BE CONTINUED

A New Chet Millerby Case: The Missing Weevil

The Case of Chet Millerby and The Missing Weevil

This is a story about a cat called Chet Millerby, who - like most cats, was also a detective. You see, when your cat disappears, and slips out through the cat flap, or prowls away off along your garden wall, you no doubt think he or she is off hunting for little voles or sparrows who are slow off the mark. Well, that is sometimes the case, but mostly you would be wrong. For mostly they are off solving a case which has proved too difficult for the Metropolitan Police. The Metropolitan Police are the best police force in the world, without a shadow of a doubt, but sometimes even they are stumped. And when they are stumped, they turn to the cats. And when they are most especially, expensively and utterly stumped, they turn to Chet Millerby.

Chet Millerby lived in a tumble-down sort of a house at the top of a hill in North London. His owner was a painter or a professor of some kind, perhaps a bit of both, and he doesn’t concern us much, only that he was beardy and absent minded and left half opened cans of cat food all down the stairs; which suited Chet just fine. The painter/professor mainly lived on the upper floors of the house, where the curtains remained ever drawn, and he sketched furiously under a solitary lamp, or pored over dusty books in a very deep chair with the springs hanging out. On the ground floor was the kitchen, a scene of total neglect: old milk cartons standing on wet newspaper all along the sills, a sink which was home to stacks of dirty plates with fish bones dangling out (again much to Chet’s liking), and great snowdrifts of unopened post - some of which dated back to 1953- covering the floor.

But between the dishwasher which had never worked, and the tottering grandfather clock whose hands had been at quarter to six for as long as anyone could remember, there was a small door. And that small door led down to the cellar. The painter/professor never went into the cellar, and if he ever thought about it (which he didn’t), he probably thought it was full of packing cases, a bicycle gathering dust and yet more unopened boxes of books he was never going to read. It wasn’t. For behind the kitchen door was in fact another door, with frosted glass, and the words “Chet Millerby, Cat Detective” engraved very neatly on it. And behind that door was some stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs there was a very large desk, and sitting behind the desk, wreathed in a cloud of smoke from his favourite kind of Turkish cigarette, was the world’s greatest sleuthing mind.

“I don’t do missing persons”, he said. “Missing persons never end well. Rubies and diamonds I can get back for you. Definitely dead persons I can find who twisted the knife. I even once discovered who was trying to poison the Prime Minister’s parrot, which wasn’t as satisfying as it sounds. But when a person goes missing, it’s usually because nobody’s found the body yet. And that’s not the kind of Easter Egg hunt I enjoy, I’m afraid.”

He leaned back, and stubbed his cigarette out in the large gold ashtray on his desk. It depicted a female cat in a bathing costume, taking a very coquettish pose, above the hand inscribed legend “To Chet - We’ll Always Have Padstow XXX Kitty ”.

The man perched uncomfortably on the stool opposite, dressed (eccentrically, Chet thought) in traditional Tyrolean yodelling garb, took off his feathered loden and wrung it between his hands.

“I don’t you think you quite understand, Mr Millerby. I’m not talking about just a person. I’m talking about a weevil.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Eighteen: You're My Wingman

The balloon drifted off into the high blue skies, and as our city faded from view, I asked Alfonso (the small grey beetle – or weevil, to be precise – who has made his home on my desk), if he knew how to actually fly the thing.

To my astonishment, the little fellow was already in full US regulation olive green overalls, and as I spoke, snapped the visor down from his helmet and started flicking switches in the control panel which had just materialised above his head.

Black screens started sliding down out of the balloon over the basket, filled with rotating luminous green data fields and diagrams. A control tower rose out of the wicker floor, and with a soft hiss, machine gun emplacements slowly emerged from either side of the ballast sacks.

“Alfonso!” I protested. “What are you doing! This is not that kind of adventure! I want us to be looking at little village church spires, and the green fields dotted with sheep, a line of deer racing across the brow of a hill, a solitary fisherman on a sheltered lake, and perhaps some villagers dancing merrily yet sinisterly with horns on their head!”

But Alfonso merely said into his helmet mic-

“OK Ice, this is Maverick, over - I’m taking the lead, let’s identify him..”

The balloon suddenly swung violently to the left and I grabbed onto one of the support ropes for dear life. The radar screen on the picnic hamper started bleeping violently, as it tipped over, and tubs of homemade wild boar pate and bottles of rose rolled towards me.

Unperturbed, Alfonso continued into his helmet-

“We have a bogie, over, I repeat a bogie... I can’t get them off my tail goddamit!”

“Alfonso” I said, “I ‘m not enjoying this game any more.”

And then I peeked through one of the gaps in the screens, and saw violently screaming towards us, a battered red Mig fighter jet, with smoked glass windows – which looked oddly familiar...

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Seventeen: A Mysterious Note

Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk and I were painting the lower study this afternoon when we heard a strange noise from the garden. It sounded like a "ffflump", rather like someone had taken all the sheets off my bed and thrown them over the bannister again, but that hadn't happened since the reform school. At this disruption to our labours, I noticed with dismay (but not surprise) that Alfonso had departed from the strict colour scheme of Valencia Lemon Wash, and had chosen to cover his wall in a series of narrow, oblique red, white, blue and grey stripes of varying lengths.

"What kind of colour scheme do you call that?" I asked Alfonso.

"Eighties BHS Duvet Cover", he replied, wiping the brush clean on the new fitted carpet as he did.

There really is nothing that can be done about certain weevils.

Before anything untoward happened, I suggested we venture into the garden for some fresh air and to investigate the "fflump" noise.

The entire garden, including the antique pouting faun, and the prize winning thistle collection, was covered in a rumpled landscape of stitched cream canvas. Alfonso and I hoisted it up and walked underneath it, like a collapsed marquee. Only it wasn't a marquee, it was a hot air balloon, and the basket was resting on top of some recently deceased ornamental blowfish in the pond.

"They're not very ornamental any more" said Alfonso, peering into the murky depths.

"Why don't you do something useful, like fill the balloon with hot air?", I grumbled, opening an envelope attached to the side of the basket. Inside was a scrawled note, in handwriting which seemed vaguely familiar, and which read "FLY ME".

I left Alfonso to the balloon and went inside to study the note. I decided to compare it to the handwriting on the package which had contained the old conch. Carefully I laid the two pieces of parchment side by side on my patented TransVectorgram (or TV for short), which looks like an overhead projector, but is actually a sophisticated handwriting analyser. It flashed and buzzed and whirred for some time, and then spooled out a length of graph paper - which contained no new or surprising information, and certainly not the answer I was hoping for.

Alfonso was standing in the doorway. "Why don't you?"

"Why don't you what?" I said.

"Why don't you switch off that TV and come and do something less boring instead!"

"Like what?"

"Like fly this hot air balloon".

The TV continued to chatter and churn out paper, as I strode out blinking into the bright sunshine, accepted my little friend's helping hand as I half clambered, half fell into the basket, and righting myself, leant over to release the guy rope that was tethering us to earth. Alfonso let a quick burst of air from the burner into the sun bleached dome above our heads, and we began to float up, and the garden and the cottage, and the mysterious note just fell away like empty clothes.... Another adventure had begun!

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Sixteen: An Unfortunate Omission

I knew I had forgotten something by the way Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, was behaving over breakfast.He was dawdling over his broiling mug of Welsh coffee and blackened skillet of eggs “Hungarian Style”, a combination he normally wolfs down with aplomb.

The back of the Alpha Bits cereal packet, with its forty year old competition to win a pair of olive coloured elasticated slacks “Perfect for lounging! Perfect for gardening! Even for that special occasion!” barely held his attention in the way it used to.“Alfonso”, I said finally, “what’s wrong?”

He mournfully looked up at me, and in the puddle of milk at the bottom of his bowl that was fast filling with the colours of a thousand different sugary dyes, pushed the remaining soggy fragments of puffed rice about to spell:

“X-Y-G-R-F-Z”

“Well, it’s certainly a very high Scrabble score” I said admiringly, “but I have no idea what-“- and then like a fool, giving my forehead a slap for extra emphasis, I realised. It was his secret code, only to be used on very special occasions, for: “YOU’VE FORGOTTEN MY BIRTHDAY, YOU UTTER SPAZ”

I wasted no time in making amends.

“Right!” I said. “We’re going out into that high street this instant, and you can have anything you want. I mean it. If your heart’s desire is in a shop window out there, it’s yours”.His spirits seemed to lift a little, although he muttered something about “So much for Alfonso the Weevil’s Day Off” – and off we set.

As soon as we reached the High St, however, I realised I had made another catastrophic blunder. In my head, we would have gone for a cheery stroll, doffing our caps at the parson and the McClintock sisters out for their daily constitutional, before drooling over the hand baked jammy rings and cream buns in Sam The Baker’s window, perhaps getting Alfonso togged up in a special birthday waistcoat at Morris & Son (Tailors), and finally settling on the lovingly crafted wooden toy train set made by Professor Guiseppe in his workshop, the paint still lick fresh on the green engine, the white haired old master craftsman oblivious to the sea of shavings at his feet.

However, I had forgotten that we actually lived in our neighbourhood, in our city.

“Right, Alfonso”, I said rather bleakly, surveying the rain lashed multilane highway, infested with railings and one way signs, “It’s a Chicken Cottage boneless bucket feast for 8 or a recently deceased lollipop lady’s windcheater from Sue Ryder. Take your pick, you lucky weevil”.

Alfonso pulled one of his most lugubrious faces, and said

“It is days like today that make me realise that there is almost no point to life. That existence is one giant, never-ending practical joke of which I am the constant beneficiary, and that it would really be better for all concerned if we called it a day. I cannot see the point of me, and I certainly cannot see the point of you.”

So dear reader, I obliged him, flattening the merry quipster under a giant fibreglass gnome, which I had stolen from our local garden centre for this very purpose. But that’s me – always thinking ahead.

I suspect, however, that he’ll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Fifteen: The Song

I cleared my throat.

Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise), who has made his home on my desk, donned a pair of original Wayfarers, scrunched up his blouson sleeves, and put the recorder to his lips.

The man put his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands.

A low, unearthly hum began to sound from the recorder, which made the windows shudder and the chandelier tinkle alarmingly above our heads. It was the kind of sound you only imagined you would ever hear before the end of the world, as the seas drained away, and the mountains tumbled and collapsed into rivers of flame.

"Alfonso!" I said.

"Sorry", he said, "I had some Hubba Bubba in my mouth", removing the offending article and sticking it carefully under the judge's table.

"Let's start again", I said. And we did.

"It was the day of the turkey hunt, the turkey hunt, the turkey hunt,

And oh how it was raining.

It was the day of the turkey hunt, the turkey hunt, the turkey hunt,

And oh how it was raining."

We continued like this for an hour or so, before we reached the first verse. I could tell we held the Judges in the palm of our hand.

"I want to hunt a turkey, to stuff him for my mum

But turkeys are extinct here, so find one will I none"

And so we continued, and the candles dribbled down to stumps, and guttered in their golden dishes, and long shadows crept across the hall, till the sun set behind the distant black horizon, and the grandfather clock in the corner ticked ever on.

Finally, as the first birds of dawn began to prepare themselves for the day, we reached the climactic final chorus

"It was my only child, my only darling daughter

We put her in a turkey suit and shot her by the water"

With a flourish, I removed the giant beak and coxcomb from my head, and Alfonso laid the recorder to rest on the floor with ceremonious grace.

For what seeme like an aeon, there was silence. Then the man spoke.

"That", he said, "Was. Amazing."

At which point the screen collapsed in on itself, disappearing to a tiny white dot, then blackness.

"Alfonso!" I said- "what did you do that for? I was enjoying that."

"Nah", he said, "I really don't like the way they've changed the format this year", stuffing another spoonful of Butterscotch Angel Delight into his greedy mouth, as we sat on the sofa together.

So, dear reader, I squashed him under the hand crafted all-in-one TV/Sky box/microwave remote control, made out of basalt and encrusted with rubies and emeralds, which I had once upon a time conveniently prised out of my late grandmother's already stiff hand.

But he'll be back.

Chapter Fourteen: The Audition - Part 1

We began to make our way through the carnivalesque crowd, who were decamped under the gaily lit trees, awaiting their turn.

The grove turned into a sandy path, and the sandy path into a broad avenue, lined by manicured lawns and lime trees. Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, grew uncharacteristically silent. The amiable conversation about which "Hi-De-Hi!" character we would most like to have dinner with faded away, as we approached a shimmering mansion, all tall windows and spotless shutters, and there before it, a plume of sparkling fountain rising out of a stony mermaid's conch.

We crunched across the immaculately raked gravel with trepidation. From out of nowhere, a bow legged footman in a periwig shambled towards us, and swung open a door.

"The Judges will see you now, good sirs", he said, with a bow so low, his periwig came back up studded with tiny pieces of pink and grey pebble.

We strode into the unlit hall, across some very polished parquet, up the wide white stairs, past a mirror twice my height, hung with dripping candles.

Alfonso said "It's all a bit "Rentaghost" for me", but I merely shushed him, as he was needed for later.

Wandering down corridor after corridor, past gloomy oil painting of martyred animal after martyred animal (St. Cow - the patron saint of travel programmes, St. Chicken - the patron saint of January sales and so on), we finally reached two tall doors, their handles garlanded shut with a silken rope, guarded by two more flunkeys in periwigs.

"This is it", I whispered to Alfonso. I saw him clutch his little good luck Gummi Bear mascot extra tightly. (Bummi Gummi, the bearded lumberjack Gummi)

The flunkeys removed the rope with a flourish, and pulled the doors open with synchronised élan.

And there, at the end of a red carpet the length of a football pitch, on a raised dais, behind a marble topped gilt table, were the very authorities we were to submit our humble talents to:

A man, and a woman, and another woman. (Sometimes it was a man, and another man, and a woman, but not today.)

I began to speak, to explain who we were, but the man picked up a tiny silver bell and rang it sharply, which I took as our signal to begin.....

TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Thirteen: The Singing Competition

After what seemed like hours, days, or even possibly weeks, the bus finally reached its destination. It shuddered to a halt, the heavy hiss of the doors seeming to pneumatically expel the last remaining passengers, the lights disappearing consecutively, the last vestiges of civilisation and public amenity gone – and we quietly clambered off the roof to look around.

At first, Alfonso - the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk- thought we were in the wrong place. But that was hardly surprising, as he still uses a map of Acacia Avenue from the back of a 1987 'Whizzer & Chips' to find his way around.

The industrial estate we found ourselves in was deserted, lit dimly by the squalid orange of the street lights, whose quiet humming provided the only noise. We felt as if in a nightmare forest, the various industrial units looming over us, blocking the way ahead with their geometric shadows.

And then Alfonso said -" Sssh, listen!"

I said "But I wasn't saying anything". However he gave me one of his looks, so I shushed all the same.

He was right. There was another noise above the humming - a faint, but definite beat of a distant drum. We plunged into the shadows, following the throbbing rhythm blindly, until we suddenly rounded a corner, and were stopped in our tracks.

In front of us lay a small wooded grove. Bright white fairy lights were twined around the trees, and paper lanterns were slung between them. And, at their bases, in little knots, stood groups of singing competitors. There were soldiers in brass buttoned coats and white trousers beating the drum we had heard and singing old military marching songs, and ladies in rose crinoline practising their arias. There were opera singers from Italy in velvet evening clothes, twirling their handle bar moustaches, and bellowing into the night. There were barbers' choirs, and country singers in checked shirts sitting round a camp fire on their harmonicas, and precocious young children aping standards from the shows to their adoring parents. There were the lost tribes of Patagonia and their never before heard tribal chants, a heavy metal band composed entirely of horse mounted Cossacks, and of course, the famous singing pigs from Dresden with their charity single. Music, chatter, laughter and the thin blue smoke from the country folk's fire filled the air.

"Now", I said to Alfonso, "that's what I call a singing competition!"

"Hmm", he replied, folding his arms with distaste. "Can I see a single halfway decent Sheena Easton impersonator? Can I buggery."

And so, dear reader, I squashed him between the heavy leaves of "The Collected Songs of Moira Stuart", which I never leave the house without. But he'll be back tomorrow- as we have to audition...

Chapter Twelve: The Bus

Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise), who has made his home on my desk, elected that we take the bus to the auditions of "The Singing Competition".

"We can practice on the upper deck", he said.

I protested that singing a long hunting song from the old country, accompanied by solo recorder, might be considered inappropriate by other passengers.

Alfonso narrowed his eyes. "You don't go on buses very often, do you?" he said.

As it turned out, the one bus that went almost direct from outside our front door to the large industrial park where the auditions were being held did not have an upper deck. It was painted in the familiar purple and green livery of our city, but slid along the ground like a mechanically automated snake.

"Hmm", said Alfonso. "I still prefer the upper deck."

"Well, tough", I said, as the monstrously one-decked creature slinked its way heavily over the potholed road towards us.

"Have you never watched 'The A-Team'?" he asked.

I shook my head heavily. In the 1980's, I had not watched any television. Instead, I had roamed the dark forests riding horses bareback and using gypsies for target practice with my new bow and arrow. But that was all in the past now.

"What have you got in your pockets?" he continued, beginning to get agitated.

I pulled out a locket of burnished gold, dangling on a slender chain, which clicked exquisitely open to reveal a miniature portrait of my late-aunt wearing a bear costume, as was the tradition. Alfonso made a face. I rooted around some more and found half a broken match, an old handkerchief, and my throwing knife.

Alfonso added to this ragtag collection a pair of multicoloured leg warmers he had picked up at the TV AM Aerobics Auction, and disappeared behind a bush. There was the sound of hasty sawing, banging and drilling.

"Alfonso", I called, "we're going to miss the bus! And our chance at winning 'The Singing Competition!'

But my last words were drowned by the sound of a rocket propeller pack rising majestically from the bush, blowing dead leaves hither and thither, as Alfonso skilfully steered it into the sky, scooped me up, and guided us both onto the flat roof of the bus - just as it pulled away from the stop.

"I love it when a plan comes together", said Alfonso, and took the cigar out of his mouth.

Only it wasn't a cigar. It was our beloved recorder... And I began to play. TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Eleven: A Decision

A huge sack of post arrived this morning. I upended it onto the desk, envelopes of all colours from brown to white spilling and sliding everywhere.

“I feel like Father Christmas”, I said.

Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise), who has made his home on my desk, poked his head up between the shifting paper floats.

“Not really”, he said, “you haven’t got enough hair.”

His assumption was further born out by discovering, after a miserable hour of ripping and slitting, that the morning’s delivery contained not one single letter from a child in crayon asking for a new train set or even a plaintive plea for daddy to stop hitting mummy. Instead, there were statements, bills, advance notices, legal warnings, court summonses and death threats of all kinds. From department store credit cards to hired assassins, it seemed that my big spending was finally catching up with me, like a large rat with a net.

All I had was a small weevil with an unhealthy 80’s obsession, and a perfectly restored Queen Anne four bedroom cottage with landscaped garden, excellent transport connections to the city centre, very well serviced by local amenities. There were no prizes for guessing which one was most likely to generate some extra income.

“Alfonso”, I said, “There’s nothing else for it. We’re going to have to enter ‘The Singing Competition’”.

‘The Singing Competition’ was a television show in which people competed by singing songs, and were rewarded with money after being judged on their performances by a mixture of professional experts and the general public.

“Can we do ‘Sussudio’?” exclaimed Alfonso, already turning pink with excitement.

“No!” I brought my fist down on the desk, and another avalanche of agricultural fertiliser bills slid onto the floor. “I will not have your Phil Collins mania making us destitute for a second time!”

I had other ideas. My late wife had left me little of value, only this cottage, and the last surviving copy of a hunting song from our old country. Hand-written in fading cat ink on ancient parchment, the dirge like folk tune could only be accompanied by the solo recorder, and over three hours, told of an unsuccessful turkey hunt conducted in the pouring rain. “It’s perfect!” I said.

Alfonso conceded, but with the compromise that he would be allowed to wear a jacket with rolled up sleeves and other Rick Astley stylings.

We set out for the auditions full of hope… TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter Ten: A Horrible Dream

This morning, I woke up to find that Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Alfonso gone?” I asked my wife, who was busy packing her briefcase for work.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Julian”, she muttered, angrily stuffing her Blackberry in on top of her low calorie cous cous salad. “I’ve got to be in Zurich for lunch, and I’m late already- do you think you might find time to actually do something today?”

“But I play with Alfonso”, I said, feeling very discombobulated. “We have adventures.”

She slammed the briefcase shut, and squeezed her eyes really tight, as if she was trying to keep them from falling out with rage. “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this for”, she said, although it came out as more of a sob.

“Where have you put Alfonso?” I said, spilling the coffee over my favourite mug. “Not to mention the wood demons”.

In her best controlled voice, which I imagine she uses for great effect in meetings with her friends in Zurich, and Washington, and Wolverhampton, she said –

“You just don’t get it, do you? There is no Alfonso. There are no – wood demons, or whatever you called them. There is just me, and your bloody children, and this flat, and your boring little real life, and if you don’t think that’s enough – well then I’m very sorry for you.”

She turned on her heel, grabbed the briefcase and stalked out, slamming the door so loud that the pile of magazines balanced on top of the TV slid off onto the floor.

I looked around glumly, at the showroom kitchen, the remains of her fruit salad, a copy of the Financial Times covered in furious notes, and at the blank white walls and oatmeal soft furnishings of a flat I didn’t recognise.

“My life has turned into some sort of surreal nightmare”, I said to myself. And pinched myself really hard. And then pinched myself again. And again. “Stop pinching yourself”, I said.

Alfonso stopped pinching and said “Are you awake yet?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Alfonso, I’ve just had the most terrifying dream”.

“Is it as boring as your usual ones? I can’t listen for long as they are re-running every episode of The Red Hand Gang on ITV8”.

“I dreamt you had gone and that I was married!”

Without missing a beat, he struck a guitar pose on my chest, and began to trill in weevilish tones:

"Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality"

As he sang, I saw the skies clear through the window, and the trees fill with chirruping birds. And for once, I didn't squash him.

Chapter Nine: Springtime for Weevils

“Well,” I said to Alfonso – the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk - the following morning, over our customary breakfast of boiled sausage and grilled eggs, “ that was quite an adventure.”

“Hmm”, he said, ruminating behind his well thumbed copy of "Shelley", by Shelley Winters, “they were a bit Jim Henson for me.”

I couldn’t help but smart a little, as if I had been flicked in the face with a wet towel.

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean, Alfonso” I said, stiffly.

A large fly slowly made his way across the dining room window. On the mantelpiece, the hands of the carriage clock busied ever on, and briskly cut their way through the cloak of silence which had suddenly descended upon us.

“You know perfectly well what I mean” he snapped, uncharacteristically, and promptly disappeared into the crack that had begun to climb like a creeper across the far wall, in between my unrivalled collection of photographs, all depicting World War II airmen stepping into their planes for the last fateful time.

For the rest of the day I felt ill at ease and out of sorts. Outside, in the garden, the natural and ordinary processes of early spring became freighted with some deep, imponderable sense of gloom and impending misery. The fat rain drops rolling off the broad leaves of the potted palm, the first pink sprigs of blossom appearing round the cherry tree, and the patches of bright sky which occasionally broke through the thick boluses of gunpowder coloured cloud above; all of these things seemed designed to grind away at any sense of peace; and I paced restlessly about the cottage, leaving half-eaten plates of food and various books strewn unhappily all over the floor.

I was about to resort to re-arranging the gallery of toby jugs on the bathroom shelf, perhaps turning them all to face the wall as some kind of retribution against the fruitless hours, when the oppressive silence was shattered by the sound of metal being violently crunched and torn apart in the street.

Rushing outside, I saw what appeared to be my Cortina slowly re-taking shape as a messy cube of steel and crushed glass, in the jaws of some vast contraption. A contraption that was being operated by Alfonso, badly disguised as a traffic warden with a false beard, jerking about with a radio remote control.

I began to shout and wave my arms about in the air, but Alfonso silenced me by removing the beard and grinning.

“It’s not really your Cortina”, he said.

I looked puzzled.

“Watch out, Weevil’s About!”, he chortled, and did a little jig.

It took only a matter of moments to hoist and cast him into the chomping jaws of the device, and his little screams brought some sense of closure to the day.

But he’ll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Eight:: Old Friends

As soon as I saw those two familiar faces in the van, for a moment all thoughts of Alfonso vanished from my mind, and in their place, came flooding memories of my childhood.

The small farm holding buried in the mountain woods, the white ducks pecking about in the grey puddles, the blue curl of steam coming up from the chimney, my father chopping logs for an hour without breaking a sweat, my mother carefully taking linen off the line strung between the kitchen window and the apple tree, and placing the folded sheets in the heavy tea chest at the bottom of the stairs. The smell of morning coffee and freshly baked rolls, the long walk down the hill to school, the small pile of odd coloured Wellington boots I found in the forest.

And then I realised I wasn't remembering my childhood, but someone else's. Wood demons can have that effect on you.

"Hello Cat", I said to the one behind the wheel, who grinned underneath his sunglasses. "Hello Stevens", I said to the other, who acknowledged me with a brief wave of his hairy paw.

If you have never seen a wood demon before- and they are quite common in my old country - they are hard to describe. Suffice to say they are hairier than you imagine, and their teeth glow in the dark.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Vee vant our veevil back. Eets that simple."

"I might understand you better if you took that Gauloise out of your mouth."

"Sorry. We want the weevil back. Where is he?"

There are times in your life when you realise you only have less than moments to make the right decision. What to say to your most favourite author once you have finally trapped him in the lift. Whether to have your aunt buried or cremated. Whether to go for the custard tart or the cheesecake.

This was one such moment, and I panicked.

"Under the van", I said, "I think you ran him over".

The two wood demons swung the doors lazily open, and loped out onto the street. Their size made it difficult for them to look properly under the van, but I could hear them sniffing around and scratching the tarmac with their claws. I listened keenly for signs of life from Alfonso, but none came.

Stevens stood up, and leaned towards me over the bonnet. He doesn't speak, but one shaggy shake of his head was enough to let me know I was in trouble. The problem is, once you've made a promise with a wood demon, they never let you forget it.

Cat straightened up, and started whacking a rolling pin slowly and deliberately on his right paw. I recognised it immediately as one from my late sister's vintage collection, which all have pictures from saucy seaside postcards blazoned across them.

I took a step back, only to find the theatregoers still surging and crowding the pavement, as they waited for taxis which would never come. I was trapped.

And then, the miraculous happened. The strains of Huey Lewis and the News singing "It's Hip To Be Square" came dancing over the heads of audience members and demons alike, and a graffiti adorned skateboard skidded to a halt at my feet, with a very recognisable figure at its helm..

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chapter Seven: A Trip To The Theatre

To make up for our wet wedding weekend, I decided last night to take Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, to the theatre.

"Get on your best bib and tucker, Alfonso" I said breezily, adjusting my bow-tie in the mirror, "we're going to a show".

Alfonso wearily flicked over a still glossy page of his vintage "Smash Hits: Thompson Twins Special Edition", and said "I'm only going if it's Baywatch -The Opera".

"Don't be ridiculous, Alfonso. Baywatch -The Opera doesn't exist".

"We'll see about that", he said, with an alarming glint in his eye.

The play was quite long and about nothing in particular, featuring somebody I vaguely remembered from a commercial. The seats were hard and uncomfortable, although Alfonso was merrily perched on top of some solid silver eighteenth century opera glasses hung round my neck, which I had more or less stolen from my mother's bureau the night before the ballooning accident.

At the interval he suggested we leave, as a neighbouring burger restaurant chain was offering a particularly attractive meat/potato/small plastic toy combination deal, but I said that we needed to stay and find out if anything interesting was going to happen.

As it turned out, it wasn't, at least not on stage (unless you count a prop apple falling off a bowl of fruit and rolling under a sofa), but something unexpected did happen as we were leaving.

A surging crowd of theatregoers brandishing scrolled up programmes and empty water bottles seemed in a frenzy to push us out of the theatre, like a wave escaping from a dam, or perhaps just desperate to escape the paralysing nothingness of middle aged people we neither liked or cared about discussing the relative merits of 1950's beach holidays from a sitting position, when with a shriek - Alfonso tumbled off the opera glasses, bounced off a handbag the size of a tank and flew slap into the middle of the road.

He had time to gather himself and smile sadly at me for but a moment, before he disappeared under the wheels of a high-sided van; a van coloured the most hellish shade of deep red, bruised and scratched from headlight to exhaust.

Before I could protest or draw the crowd's attention to the weevil's plight, the smoked glass window wound slowly down, and the van's occupants finally made themselves known to me.

"So", I said, "I thought it would be you."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chapter Six: A Wedding

This weekend, I took Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, to a wedding in the country.

It was the marriage of someone I didn't like particularly to somebody whose name I could never remember. I brought down out of the loft an emerald green smoking jacket which I had carefully removed from the still warm body of my late step-grandfather, all those summers ago, according to his very strict instructions. Alfonso made himself comfortable behind the tangerine carnation we had unfortunately been asked to wear, and off we set.

We arrived early in the small village miles from anywhere decent to stay where the couple had thoughtfully chosen to have their nuptials, and I found a space right by the churchyard, behind a red van which I could have sworn I had seen before.

I poked around the moss-covered gravestones of some people whose names you could no longer read, who had been there a very long time, listening to a solitary sparrow singing in the yew tree. Very occasionally the peace was disturbed by Alfonso tricking his Speak & Spell into saying undesirous words such as "fuckwand" and "breastpump".

The service committed the cardinal sins of being both predictable and uneventful, although Alfonso fell asleep, and I had to carry him out when he started snoring the theme tune of MacGyver.

At the reception, we were on the leftovers table, next to a couple of aunts, the vicar and a dull couple who's sole claim to fame was a university kayaking trip with the groom in 1992. Alfonso not only drank all the white wine, but when the wedding cake arrived, he rolled the dessert spoon over an upturned pepper shaker, creating an impromptu catapult with which he sent most of the ill-advised tiramisu style concoction flying directly into the cleavage of the bride's mother.

During the speeches, the effect of the amount of wine consumed in ratio to the size of a weevil's body was revealed, and he began to heckle. As the best man struggled through a seemingly endless anecdote about the groom and some missing golf clubs, Alfonso called out

"What do you think this is, New Faces of '86?! Bring on the fat man with the talking dog!"

We were asked to leave shortly after, and it began to rain. By the time we found our car, were sodden and dripping with mud.

As we crawled back along the motorway, trying to shake a red van driving right up behind us, I said to Alfonso-

"God I hate weddings"

He replied

"Which is why I've accepted invitations for us to go to one every single weekend between now and Christmas"

So, I squashed him in the Cortina's ash tray. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Five: A Bike Ride

Today a small parcel arrived in the post, with strangely familiar handwriting. I unwrapped the string and brown paper to find a small mother of pearl hearing trumpet, delicately engraved in amethyst with an Alpine scene. Under the horn was a card informing me that one of my second cousins by marriage in Bavaria had unexpectedly passed away, leaving strict instructions to forward me the enclosed.

"You know what this means, don't you?" I said to Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk.

"That they haven't left you any cash, again", he said, barely glancing up from his new Atari console Airwolf game.

"No, it means we can finally go for that bike ride I've been promising you."

Alfonso - it must be said - looked less than thrilled, but once I had carefully attached the hearing trumpet to the front of my helmet with an elastic band, and secured him in the trumpet with strips of masking tape, he looked positively furious.

But it was another beautiful spring day, and the city appeared bright and hard in the sun, like quartz. We sailed up to the top of a grassy hill, and took in the view, shielding our eyes from the glare with our hands. I produced a small picnic of pork pie and beer from my basket, and we sat under a tree wolfing it down in silence, feeling the warm light on our faces.

Later, we cruised back down into the old city, past the steps of the cathedral, and across the busy squares. We dawdled in the grand shopping streets, so Alfonso could press his nose against the windows of the golf sale shops, and snuck in and out of shady alleys. At some point there was a brief altercation involving a high-sided red van with blacked out windows at a junction, and voices may have been raised. (I wondered idly if it was the same van that I had heard backfiring the other day?)

We followed the large purple and green buses of our city, threading in and out of their elephantine convoy down to the river, where I belted hell for leather along the dusty paths, till the signs and railings of the city flew past, and began to disappear, blurring gradually into clumps of gorse and holly bushes.

As the sun faded, we suddenly found ourselves quite alone in the dusk, in a landscape I didn't recognise, with a distinctly unspring like chill creeping up on us. I turned around and steered us swiftly home, not pausing for breath until we reached the familiar broad avenues of the new town.

"Well," I said to Alfonso later, carefully unstrapping the conch, exhausted but happy, "what a city, eh? What a city we live in. What do you say to that, eh?"

He looked at me in that way which he has, and said

"I still think that van had right of way."

So, dear reader, I squashed him. But he will be back tomorrow.

Chapter Four: Lunch

Today, I took Alfonso (the small grey weevil who has made his home on my desk) out for lunch. This was in part a gesture of reconciliation as we have had some awkward moments recently, and also because, with the blossom popping out on trees and the daffodils all standing in a row- it felt like that kind of a day.

I carefully placed Alfonso in a small silver cigarette case that had been left to me by late grandfather. For some curious reason, it is inscribed with the initials V.A.R.P., which were not his. On the front, it is engraved with a picture of a hot air balloon, in the Art-Deco manner.

Alfonso was reluctant. "I don't smoke".

"Just get in", I said, and shut the box, which has a very satisfying and well made closing mechanism.

"If I was American, I could make millions from suing you", he said from within, but I pretended not to hear him.

We went round the corner to a little French place I know. That is to say, the tables at the front with white linen cloths, the laminated menu in swirling type offering croque monsieur type fare, the haughty waiter with a pencil moustache- all these things suggest a French brasserie. But I happen to know as a fact that they are all Bulgarian, and the food more or less bears this out.

The haughty waiter waltzed over to us between the empty tables.

I made him wait for several minutes, and then began to give my order.

"If I could have the chicken geziers salad, but without the geziers, and the dressing on the side. Then, I'd like the moules mariniere, but with spinach on the side, instead of frites."

The waiter scribbled on his pad. "Bread?"

I shook my head.

"And to drink?"

"Just some sparkling mineral water please".

"Very good monsieur", he said, but not like he meant it. "And for monsieur", he said, gesturing with his pencil towards Alfonso, who was engaged in a complicated game of Melrose Place Top Trumps with himself.

Without even looking up, Alfonso said very quickly and confidently-

"Foie gras, with a glass of Sauterne. Followed by the fillet - rare, and a bottle of your most expensive claret, of which I have very limited expectations but it can't be worse than what he's having. I will then decide between the iles flotant and the cheese board, but you had probably better saddle up both."

The waiter departed in stunned silence. Somewhere, in the streets behind us, a van backfired noisily.

Alfonso looked up, finally. "Heather Locklear again", he sighed. "I'm never going to win this game."

So, dear reader, I squashed him under a candlestick. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Three: Weevil At Work

Alfonso, the small grey weevil who has made his home on my desk, reappeared this morning and said:

"Where are you going?"

I told him I was going to work, and he insisted on coming with me, so I carefully placed him in a small lacquered Chinese box left to me by my late great-aunt.

"It smells of death, I'm not going in there", he said.

"It smells of roses", I said, closing the lid.

"Death!" said a voice from inside the box.

On the way to my office, we didn't talk much. I flicked through a copy of a free newspaper, and I think I could hear Alfonso listening to his favourite album, "The Very Best of Berlin" - but I may be wrong.

Once at work, I tend to get down to it, and left Alfonso at my work station to his own devices. I checked my email, both work and personal, and browsed some online news sites, and deleted quite a few emails about missing pencils and meetings that had happened several weeks ago.

I opened a document that needed some attention, but didn't do much to it for a while.

I popped down to the canteen for a coffee, and then decided on impulse to buy a pain au chocolat as well, because it was Wednesday. Back at my desk, I ate the croissant and drank the coffee while leafing through some old glossy magazines someone had left there.

After lunch, I went to quite a long meeting about something or other, and when I got back to my desk, replied to some emails that had arrived during the meeting, and listened to some voice mails, but did not return the calls.

I closed down the document, checked the online news pages again, and noticed it was time to begin packing up.

It was then that I noticed Alfonso, who I had more or less forgotten about, watching me from the corner of a battered desk tidy, in which he made himself quite comfortable amongst a dirty eraser and three solitary staples. He was wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian tropical shirt, and drinking a weevil-sized pina-colada.

And looking at me, in that way he has.

"Yes?", I said, half way through stuffing the old glossy magazines into my briefcase.

"I'm just wondering", he said, before taking a very long suck of his cocktail through a straw, "what it is exactly that you do all day long?"

So of course, I squashed him. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Two: The Park

There is a small, dusty grey beetle (or weevil to be more precise) who lives on my desk, called Alfonso. He spent most of yesterday haranguing me for spending too much time on facebook, so I squashed him, but he popped up again today, over my mid-morning coffee, and suggested a walk in the park to talk things over.

I obliged, because it was such a beautiful spring morning, popped him carefully in a matchbox, and off we went. In the park, we found an old iron bench peeling with green paint facing a fountain which no longer works. I took out the matchbox, and Alfonso took some sun on the bench while we watched no water come out of the fountain.

After a while, an old lady in a very warm coat for this time of year, dragging a battered shopping case behind her, came and stood in front of us and stared at the fountain.

Alfonso said "Maybe she's got very thick glasses, which is why she can't see it's not working?"

"Ssh", I said, "she might be able to hear you"

"I doubt", he said, "she's probably deaf as well as blind."

"You're quite caustic for a small beetle", I remarked.

After a bit, the old lady adjusted her glasses and moved on.

Some other people came and went, and a large panting golden retriever went past, wagging his tail without any regard for weevils, and nearly sent Alfonso flying. Further off in the park, there were some kids kicking a ball around, and we could hear the chug of a lawnmower hovering in the distance.

Alfonso stretched himself out on the top of the matchbox. "This is the life", he said.

But I was still quite cross at the accusations from yesterday of spending too much time on facebook, so I squashed him. He'll be back tomorrow, though.

Chapter One: Facebook

As I mentioned in my status update this morning, there is a small dusty grey beetle, or to be more precise, a weevil, called Alfonso who lives on my desk. He is a fan of early Tom Hanks movies, and some of you have come across him before, I believe. He is often too busy with his own projects to stop and talk, but this morning, I saw him perching on the corner of my porridge bowl, eyeing me suspiciously.

"What are you looking at, Alfonso?" I said, unable to ignore him any longer.

"What do you think I'm looking at?" he said.

I looked around behind me, but there wasn't anything there, just some books on a shelf, and a pile of unopened post.

"Am I being thick?", I asked him.

Alfonso climbed down off the bowl and onto the strip between the edge of my keyboard and the screen, which he finds a very convivial temperature.

"I'm looking at you", he said. "Why are you always on facebook?"

"I'm not always on facebook", I said.

"Yes you are. I'm not stupid, you know."

"Prove it."

He got out a small weevil sized notebook, and flicked through the pages, and began to read off a list of times. "9.30am, 9.45am, 10:00am, 10.14am, 10:16am, 10:58am, 11:04am - I thought you were meant to be writing a book?"

"It's not that simple", I countered, beginning to feel a little uneasy. "What do you know about it anyway, you're only a weevil?"

"Precisely", he replied triumphantly, and I could tell he was giving a rather smug grin.

"Precisely nothing! You're not even on facebook" - and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I had fallen into his trap.

"No", he said, in that way of his which always makes my blood boil, "I'm not on facebook. And what have I accomplished this morning? Would you like to know?"

I pretended I hadn't heard, and busied myself with an urgent email demanding my attention about a extra cheap cialis clearance sale in somewhere called Umbutano.

"Do you know where Umbutano is, Alfonso?" I asked him. But he was not to be diverted.

"First" he began, "I walked all the way across your desk. That's quite some way, you know. And then, I walked all the way back. I climbed all over your books. I crawled up the wall a bit. I found some toast crumbs to eat, and a piece of lint. What have you done?"

"It's different! You're only a stupid weevil! I've got- you know, invitations to reply to, groups to join, people to spy on- it's a whole new dimension to my social life."

"Whatever you say", he said, smirking, and he leant against the bottom of my screen, with some of his legs crossed, and filing some nails with the others.

"Now if you don't mind", I said, flicking him off so he bounced with a crack against the window sill, "I really am trying to write a book".

"Yes", came a weak little voice streaming up from the floor, "and I really am trying to climb Mt Kilimanjaro".

So I squashed him, dear reader. But don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow.