Emily is on the set of the film at eight o� clock the next morning. It looks as if it�s going to be another beautiful day. It couldn�t be anything but a beautiful day for Emily. She realised that if Cyril had touched the wires first, she might never have got the part. That�s the mistake she made all those years ago � she let Amy touch the plug first.

Alfred arrives half an hour later. As he�s going through the script with Emily, one of the film crew comes over with two letters � one for each of them. Emily looks at the envelope. The only writing on it is the name �Emily�, and she recognises her sister�s handwriting.

Alfred�s letter is from Cyril, but both say the same thing. Because of the shock, Emily is the only one capable of saying it out loud. And she says it very loudly. �They�ve eloped!�

�This is� I�m a genius! I started out with a story of a man who once dressed as Santa. There was no story. And now I�ve got a film about him eloping with a Hollywood star!�

�And I�m playing that star!�

�Sorry, but I�m afraid I�m going to have to give that role to your sister.�

�But you said I could play Amy.�

�It makes no sense to hire a Hollywood star to play a role and then get her unknown sister to play that role just because the star happens to be playing herself. It�s more of a reason for her to be playing herself because she is herself. It doesn�t make a lot of sense anyway but that�s the way it is. This will need some serious re-writing. We can forget about Mickey Mouse hitting Cyril�s head off the ground. Excuse me, I need to find the writers.�

This isn�t such a beautiful day after all. Emily realises that if Cyril had touched the wires first, he might not have eloped with Amy, and she�d still have her part in the film.

In the evening, Mark and Joe go looking for John � the man who Carol met on the night she found the perfect font size and began the search for that shade of red. Carol said that he lives on the hill near the handball courts, and Joe�s parents know a John who lives in that area, so they visit his house. Joe explains to him that they�re looking for a man who met a woman in the park a few weeks ago when she was getting drunk and playing Frisbee with her friends, and yes, this is the John they�re looking for. He remembers that meeting, and he�s not surprised to hear that Carol doesn�t have a very clear memory of it. He says that she seemed to be lost in another world when he told her that he was looking for a certain shade of red. Mark, Joe and Mr. Hollywood-Story Blanket are all eager to hear why he was looking for a colour. They sit at the patio table in John�s back garden and he tells them the story.

For the past ten years, John has worked for a company that makes garden furniture. The owner was a man called Bryn Thomas-Beagle, and he began to lose interest in the company during his later years. His employees followed his example, but they still did reasonably well financially because they were a familiar brand. Some of John�s colleagues stopped turning up to board meetings when Bryn stopped talking about issues related to the company. It got to the stage where there was just Bryn, John and a woman called Laura at the meetings, and the meetings were never in the board room. Bryn would start the meeting with the words, �It�s sometime in June and so on�� Sometimes he even got the month wrong. He�d go outside with his fourteen-year-old dog. John and Laura would follow. They�d walk down a narrow lane just outside the town, with Bryn talking about the farm where he grew up, or holidays he�d been on, or anything really. They�d go through a gap in a ditch, and go down a hillside covered in trees. At the bottom of the hill there was an old stone cottage that had been uninhabited for over thirty years. Bryn would look through the windows, and sometimes go inside. He�d look into a shed behind the cottage that always seemed to be on the point of collapse, and all the time he�d talk. John took notes of the meeting, but it was very difficult to take detailed notes because Bryn rambled from one thing to another. Laura had a notebook with her too, but she never listened to Bryn. She often drew pictures of the things she planned to do in the evening, and sometimes she�d show them to John behind Bryn�s back, and whisper, �Do you think that�s possible?�

Bryn is dead now and Laura is working for another company, in another country. The dog is dead too. The board meetings are always in the board room now, but they�re much more boring. John sometimes walks around the old route of the board meetings, but that time seems so far away. It�s lost forever.

A few weeks ago, he was reading through some notes of one of Bryn�s outdoor meetings that took place four years ago, just at the start of July. Bryn was telling them about a car trip with his wife thirty years ago. She had a red plastic case for her glasses, and it was often on the dashboard when she had her sunglasses on. Laura was wearing sandals, and when he saw the red nail varnish on her toe nails he said, �That�s the colour of the case for the glasses! It was just like that shade of red.� John wrote a little note about this in the margin, and when he read it again four years later, that day was so vivid in his mind. He could see it clearly � the dog asleep in the shade of a tree, the sharp shadows of the leaves on the grass all around it. Laura didn�t even draw any pictures � it was just too hot. And he remembered that red, the colour on her toe nails, and the image in his mind of the glasses case on a dashboard in the sun. That colour stands out most in his mind, because when he got home from work after that meeting four years ago, he went out for a walk in the evening, and as he was going through the park he saw a woman chasing a piece of red paper that was carried on the breeze. It was the same shade of red as the nail varnish.

When he read that note in the margin, he could see the colour so clearly in his mind, and he tried to find something that was a similar shade of red. He looked at every red thing he had in the house, and he looked for red things in photos, but nothing matched that image in his mind. He started walking around the town every evening, trying to find something that looked like the piece of red paper, and it was on one of those walks that he met Carol. He saw the red Frisbee flying over his head as he walked through the park. The sun had nearly reached the horizon, and the Frisbee caught the last of the evening light as it flew through the air. This reminded him of the piece of red paper on the breeze in the park, and the red nail varnish, and that day four years ago. He picked up the Frisbee and stared at it, but it wasn't the shade of red he was looking for. It looked much closer to the image in his mind as it flew threw the air. Carol came over to him to get the Frisbee back, and she asked him why he was so interested in it. He told her about that board meeting four years ago, about Bryn�s memory and the colour of Laura�s nail varnish. He told her that he�d been trying to find that shade of red ever since reading through his notes of the meeting and seeing a note in the margin about the colour. She seemed very distracted when he told her about this. She just stared into space, and she didn�t even notice when John said goodbye and left. He put it down to the drink � she seemed to be swaying from side to side as she stood there.

They tell John about how Carol has been looking for a certain shade of red ever since meeting him, and she�s not sure why she�s so keen to find that particular colour. They take him to see Carol. She recognises John straightaway, and she starts to remember more of their last meeting as he tell her his story � the same story he told her on that last meeting. But when he gets to the end of his story, she just looks confused again. John says that he's seen the expression on her face before, but she doesn�t respond. And then suddenly the confusion vanishes and she looks as if she's just made a revelation. �I know what it is,� she says. �I remember when you told me your story on that evening, it reminded me of something, but I couldn�t think of what it was. I knew there was something in the back of my mind that was very similar. I couldn�t remember what it was then, but now I know. In fact, I can show ye.�

She tells them about Tara, her sister. Tara has never needed the excuse of searching for the right font size to go out drinking and wake up in strange places. Her family have always been very critical of her behaviour, but the criticism never had any effect. She once wrote a long essay about her behaviour that was extremely critical of herself, much more critical than her parents or her aunt ever were. She thought this would take the wind out of their sails, but when they read it they were extremely critical of the punctuation, grammar, spelling and layout. She started presenting them with regular reports of her behaviour. They were very detailed and sometimes very explicit. Her articles for the newspaper were normally about things like fainting, and these reports were a complete departure. But her parents always only criticised the presentation rather than the content. She used to get Carol to read through the reports just to make sure they were grammatically incorrect, and Carol sometimes added in her own comments.

Tara often exaggerated the content, and she completely made up a few stories. And then she tried to act out some of the scenes she created, sometimes going to extraordinary lengths to stage them accurately. She started writing reports of the things she really wanted to do, but was too lazy to do, and then she�d do them just to make the reports true. She always wanted to go to Alaska, so she wrote a detailed report on her trip. She mentioned everything from the clothes she wore to what she got up to with a park ranger in the back of his truck. It�s this report that Carol remembered when John told her about his search for the colour. When he mentioned the note in the margin about the colour of the nail varnish and the red paper, she remembered a footnote in her sister�s report about the colour of the nail varnish she�d wear in Alaska. She had described in detail the shade of red on her nails, and how it looked against the snow. �It was that report that was in the back of my mind when you told me about your notes,� Carol says to John. �And it was the layout of that report that I copied when I got home that night.�

She shows them what she typed on the night she met John � the template of the article on her fainting. They look through it as she goes to look for her sister�s report on her trip to Alaska. She finds that a few minutes later, and she shows it to them. The layout is just like the template for the article. The fonts for the text and the headings are the same. The structure is similar too. In Carol�s template, she specifies that the opening should go through the background of the main characters, and this is exactly what Tara does in her report. And then there�s the footnote on the colour of the nail varnish. �That�s what started my search for the colour,� Carol says. �When you told me about how you were searching for the colour mentioned in the note, it must have triggered something in my mind about how my sister specified the colour of her nail varnish in a footnote. It�s the colour that my sister mentioned that I�ve been looking for. Actually, Tara must have the actual nail varnish. She went to Alaska, and she tried to get every detail of the report just right.�

Carol calls her sister on the phone and tells her about the shade of red she wants to find. Tara comes over with the nail varnish on her finger nails, and as soon as Carol sees it she says, �That�s it! That�s the colour I�ve been looking for!�

Sadly it�s not the colour John has been looking for. And when Carol looks at her template for the article, it looks all wrong now. She says that she�ll show John all the colour charts she has and all the red things she�s collected, and he promises to help her in the search for the font size.

Joe, Mark and Mr. Hollywood-Story Blanket leave to meet Alfred. They tell him all about John and Carol, and the origins of their search for that shade of red. �So that�s why all of these red things are lying about the place,� Mark says. �People are collecting them, and then they leave them on the ground if the colour isn't quite right. Although Mr. Hollywood-Story Blanket suspects that Uncle Joe might be responsible for the key rings.�

�That�s interesting,� Joe says. �He might have a point there.�

�And hedgehogs might have something to do with it as well. And elks, and elves. And maybe Elvis too, but that�s a bit of a long shot. And the bees and puppies.�

Alfred is too excited to say anything. He always had a feeling that listening to the blanket would pay off in the end, and it has. This is the greatest plot he�s ever come across. He has things like a group of good looking young women meeting in an old house every night. There are so many things you could do with that. Or if he went down another road, he could turn it into The Lord of the Rings.

Cyril calls him on the phone that night � he just got married to Amy, but Alfred isn�t interested in that. He tells Cyril about the changes to the film. There�s a slight change in focus now. Instead of being about Cyril�s life, it�ll be about the things going on around him, and some of those things might shape his life in an indirect sort of a way, so it�ll still be a biopic. And the story of Cyril and Amy will be told as a sort of a subplot � it�ll have to be connected up to one of the other stories in some way. Cyril and Amy are perfectly happy with this. They don�t really care about the film any more.

Alfred goes to talk to the special effects team to start work on the scene where someone tries to shoot an elf with a laser target.

The film will be full of short creatures, like puppies, elves, hedgehogs, bees, peacocks, a meercat and so on. When Alfred was making Snow White, he brought in a writer called Tommy Afridge to do the script. When Tommy was checking in at the airport with his wife as they set off on their honeymoon, he was asked if he�d like a window seat, and he said yes. Then he was asked if he�d like to see short people. He had no desire to see short people, so he said no, but then he thought that this refusal might make him seem prejudiced against short people. His wife had a fear of flying, and she didn�t say much to him during the flight. Tommy was worried that her silence was because of his apparent prejudice against short people. He kept talking about some short people he knew and how great they were, and how well he got on with them. He often mentioned them on the honeymoon too. He wrote a book about the short people he knew, and Alfred got him in to write the script of Snow White because he wanted someone who�d be sensitive about the height of the dwarves. Tommy was furious when Alfred got bees to play the dwarves, but he won a few awards for his script, and no one objected to his portrayal of short people, because most people considered it to be a portrayal of bees. The critics said it was a very sympathetic portrayal of bees. Alfred adds Tommy to the writing team for the film about Cyril.

So there are five writers now � Minty, Ronny, Dara, Penelope and Tommy. The latest re-write goes well until they try to write Elvis into the script. They can�t seem to avoid writing in a sidekick called Dog Eighty Himloch who�s always drinking milk, but in one scene he shaves one half of his head, and he feels he�s not good enough to drink milk after this. But Elvis sings a song that tells him he�ll always be good enough to drink milk. He hotwires a car after this.

The blanket will be the detective at the centre of the film, but Alfred doesn�t know who he�ll get to play it yet. It won�t be Colin Farrell because he�ll be playing himself. Alfred decided to make him the sweeper in the house � he�s hiding from Penelope and Chloe. Alfred likes the idea of Colin Farrell alone in a house at night with all those young women. He also realised that the bees would be perfect to play the elves � they just have to hang little lights around their necks. This would be at night in the house. The electricity goes and the elves arrive to bring light, like a Saint Bernard bringing brandy. They could have a Saint Bernard bringing brandy too, or vodka and Coke.

Even though it was difficult to work with the bees in Snow White, he�s used them in every film he�s done since because they�re so good. He once got them to watch a Jackie Chan film, and they were a bit like ninja bees after it � they made the sound anyway. Bees are very flexible, not like cows. He once needed a windmill in a film, so he showed a video of a windmill to cows, but they just looked at it and did nothing. He still used them as a windmill.

Alfred has used certain shorthand techniques in all of his films, like whenever there�s a character called Shirley it means that she�s the one who knows how to ask the bees if they�d like a cup of tea. It started in Snow White � Shirley was the racing driver in that film (she was added in to bring the story up to date). So Shirley can be brought into the film now that the bees are in it. Another rewrite is needed.

When Penelope was ten, she once went to the doctor with her mother. The waiting room was called �Bumble�, and it often gave people a bad feeling. Penelope asked the nurse why it was called �Bumble�, and she said, �Y� know, like the bees.�

�Bees? It was called after bees?�

Penelope had a feeling that bees and good medical practise don�t sit well together, so she insisted on going to another doctor, but the waiting room at the next place was called �Great White Shark�, so they went back to �Bumble� (Joe would definitely go for �Great White Shark�).

Penelope got on fine with the doctor after waiting twenty minutes in �Bumble�. When they were trying to write the bees into the film, she made them the friends of a doctor. Alfred decided to make Shirley the doctor. She�d be in the house at night as Colin Farrell is sweeping, and she�d save his life somehow.

They had to find a reason for the electricity going so that the elves could come along. The only thing Alfred could think of was someone getting electrocuted, and the only person he could think of to do a convincing electrocution scene was Emily. She was hired as a stunt woman. She�d have to do the scene in real life first, and if that went well, Alfred said she could do it in the film too.

On Friday night there are a few new faces in the group of women who come to Ted as he sweeps the Flynn house. Emily is one of them. All she has to do is touch a plug in the kitchen and sparks will fly from it. The electricity in the house will go, and she has to pretend that she�s been electrocuted, but she won�t get a shock from the plug.

This part of the plan goes to perfection. The lights go out and Emily is found on the kitchen floor. As she�s helped to her feet she explains how she was electrocuted by the plug.

One of the other new faces in the crowd is Clare. She�s upstairs, and after the electricity goes she�s supposed to accidentally trip on the landing and drop a vase into the hall below, onto the head of Ted, who�s sweeping there. It�s not a real vase, so it won�t injure him, but �Shirley� will be there to give him whatever medical attention he needs. He shouldn�t need any medical attention, but in the film there�ll be a lot of blood.

After the electricity goes, the bees with the lights are released into the house. Clare stands on the landing and watches the little red lights moving through the darkness. She remembers a time when she was sitting on an armchair one evening and she started to fall asleep. She suddenly realised that her boyfriend always reached for a cup of tea with his left hand, and for the coffee with his right hand. She looked at how he picked up cups of tea and coffee over the following days, and she was right. The tea was always in his left hand and the coffee in his right.

On another evening in the armchair, as she started to fall asleep, she heard a sound and she was convinced that it was butterflies ringing little bells. She didn�t know how she knew this, but she was right about the tea and coffee, so she assumed that she was right about the butterflies ringing bells too. She put a lot of thought into this, and she came to the conclusion that the butterflies must have had the little bells around their necks, but she started to wonder how likely this really was. She started to think that she must have imagined it, but now she sees the bees with little lights around their necks, or around their bodies, and the butterflies with bells seems much more likely.

She stares at the bees and completely forgets what she�s supposed to do. Ted passes by below. Emily stands in the hall and whispers something up to Clare, to remind her about the vase. Clare suddenly remembers her �accident�, so she drops the vase into the hall without even looking at who�s below. It lands on Emily�s head and she falls over, more out of shock than anything else. Ted drops his brush and goes over to her. He helps her up and takes her to a sofa. Emily realises that Ted will be Colin Farrell in the film, so she plays along.

Alfred says that she can play herself in that scene, and Penelope is very jealous. She wonders why she didn�t think of that before. She insists on another rewrite so she can put herself in a scene where Colin Farrell saves her life.

Ronny has just read a book psychology in snooker. When the author set out to write this book, he couldn�t stop thinking of monkeys on roller-skates, so he tried to get them into the book. Ronny can�t stop thinking of monkeys on roller-skates after reading the book, so he tries to get them into the script. Alfred gives JD a part in the film, as long as Joe and Steve can teach him how to roller-skate.

Mark and Mr. Hollywood-Story Blanket are executive producers, but they spend a lot of time with Joe, Steve and the monkey. Mark wouldn�t mind if the whole film was about Joe and Steve trying to teach the monkey how to roller-skate, but Mr. Hollywood-Story Blanket doesn�t want to say anything to Alfred about that in case he actually does it. Emily and all of the others would lose their roles then.