The shop had lost a lot of customers because of the rumours concerning Harry and the moose, but a rumour about Harry helping a blind child was enough to undo the damage to his reputation. They even gained a few new customers. People donated money for the child, and some donated money for the conversion of the car. Harry didn�t know what that meant either, but his policy in situations like this was not to ask questions when people gave him money. After weighing up the amount of money he had made like this over the years and the amount of trouble that money got him into, he decided it was best to just take the money.

Harry convinced Gabrielle to make a second appearance in the shop and a photo of her standing in front of the shop with Harry, Barbara and Roy appeared on the front page of the local newspaper. The caption said �Sunny Spells in East Street�. Gabrielle became a weathergirl at about the same time she started going out with Martin, and the same time she entered the Miss Ireland contest. She was a friend of Martin�s flat mate, and she stayed with them for a few weeks. She often did the shopping for them, and after she came back from the supermarket one day she drew a little dot on the back of her hand to remind herself to tell Martin that she forget to get his cornflakes because she got distracted by a guide dog. But she told it to five other people before she told Martin and she story changed each time she told it. By the time the fifth person heard it, the story was about how there�s a man who calls himself Sir James who lives at the dam and makes jugs and bowls for the tourist market, even though no tourists ever go to the dam. And Sir James might be James Bond. She added in one other detail when she told Martin � that this man is her grandfather. Martin asked her if she was worried about her grandfather and she said, �A bit, yeah.�

�Do you want to go to the dam to make sure he�s okay?�

�Yeah, alright.�

Martin drove Gabrielle to the dam. It�s about four miles outside the town. There was a man there with a fishing rod in his hand, and he looked a bit confused. He was the only person there, and Martin assumed that this must be Sir James. She asked him if he was okay, and he said that he was sure he�d forgotten something. Gabrielle was satisfied that he was okay, so they left him there and went home.

Gabrielle often used to go to a fortune teller called Mia Owl. Mia used to read tea leaves, but she thought that reading white spirits sounded much more mysterious than reading tea. So she started doing that, but there wasn�t much to see in the white spirits, so she had to make things up. Her �visions� were really just story lines she�d seen in soap operas. It was very successful because people kept coming back for updates on the stories, even though it all seemed a bit far-fetched.

Gabrielle went to see her just after meeting �Sir James�. Mia read the white spirits and told her that she�ll become a beauty queen despite a plot to bribe the judges, and that the man she�d just met at a wedding would be her future husband. Gabrielle had just been to the dam with Martin, so she assumed that the dam was the wedding and Martin was the man. Mia also said that the groom at this wedding would have an affair with one of the bridesmaids, and the bridesmaid would threaten to tell her sister, the bride. Gabrielle didn�t know who the man at the dam was (she had forgotten that he was Sir James, her grandfather and maybe James Bond) so she assumed that he must be the groom.

She told Martin about it when she got home and he said, �Your grandfather is having an affair with the bridesmaid? After all these years.�

�Oh yeah, he�s my grandfather. My grandmother won�t like that.�

�No wonder he�s hiding out at the dam.�

There was a man called William who made a faint ringing sound when it was windy, and a loud ringing sound during a storm. His friends used to call him William Tinkle when it was windy and William Ding Dong during a storm. He was happy when the sun shone, sad when it rained, and weary when it was cloudy. He became a weather forecaster. He�d say, �Hello. My name is William Ding Dong and I�m sad� Goodnight.� Or, �Hello. My name is William Tinkle and I�m very, very weary� Goodnight.�

The TV station that William worked for were making cutbacks. They had a very small budget for drama, and they realised they could use William in a drama series. His show was basically just him sitting in front of a desk, just like on the weather forecast (to save costs they used the same set) and he�d say, �Hello. My name is William Tinkle, but I�m happy. I should be happy tomorrow too, but I don�t know if I�ll be happy next week. My wife left me a few months ago, and it would have been our wedding anniversary next week. She left me for another man��

A lot of people thought that this was just an extended version of the weather forecast, but the show became hugely popular as people tried to figure out the weather features that the characters represented. Some people believed that his wife represented storm-force winds, and the man she ran off with was hailstone, but there was a lot of disagreement about this. These supposed weather forecasts had no bearing whatsoever on the actual weather, but people stopped expecting their weather forecasts to be true to life.

Gabrielle watched William�s show after talking to Martin. On that evening, William tells a similar story to the one Mia told earlier. And in this version, the fiancé of the bridesmaid is coming around to the groom�s house to confront him about the affair. She said to Martin, �My grandfather is in danger. He can�t stay at the dam. I think there�s� It�s the weather. I think they�re expecting a flood.�

So they went back to the dam. Gabrielle brought an umbrella this time. �Sir James� was standing next to the river then, still looking confused. Gabrielle told him that he could stay with them for as long as he wanted. He was too confused to object, so he went home with them, and on the way he told them that he was on a bit of a fishing holiday. That made sense to Martin � he was better off getting away from things at a time like that.

The following day, Gabrielle went to see someone on the organising committee of the festival. A qualifying competition for Miss Ireland was due to be held during the festival that year, and Gabrielle decided to enter after Mia told her that she�d become a beauty queen. The man she met was known as �Impey� � that�s what he called himself. He wasn�t short, but he called himself Impey because of his tendency not to finish sentences or words. He always considered his name to be self-explanatory because it obviously didn�t refer to his height, and height is the first thing people would think of when they hear the name �Impey�, so he thought that by using this name it would obviously refer to his unwillingness to explain things properly. If people still asked him why he was called Impey, he�d look at them as if they were stupid. He considered that to be more than sufficient as an explanation of his name, but some people still didn�t get it. So then he said, �I�m the laz prez�� This was his attempt to explain that he was the last president of the Historical Buildings Society, but it was such a half-hearted attempt that it obviously explained why he was called Impey.

When Gabrielle met him she didn�t get it after he stared at her, so he had to say, �I�m the laz prez��

�Elvis Presley!� Gabrielle said. �I thought you were dead.�

Impey realised that it would be easier to go along with this. He nodded.

�Can I have your autograph?�

Impey signed his name with a dot � that�s all he could be bothered with. On her way home, Gabrielle remembered something that Mia once told her about a man who who�d be killed when a boat explodes, but he comes back from the dead six months later. That must be Elvis.

She showed the autograph to Martin, and then �Sir James� said, �I just remembered what I�ve been trying to remember. I think I might have left the gas on.�

It all came together in Gabrielle�s mind � her grandfather fishing, the boat, the gas on, the explosion� She said to Martin, �Someone is trying to kill my grandfather and there should be some scattered showers in the afternoon!� �James� wasn�t worried because he�d never met her grandfather. She said to him, �Don�t go fishing today. Don�t go fishing.�

She went to see Mia again and asked if her grandfather is in danger of an explosion on a boat.

�Oh yes. I can definitely see an explosion on a boat.�

�Can we stop it?�

�Only one man can save him � Tad Johnson. He�s played by a singer who was popular in the seventies, but his career has flagged since then.�

That could only mean one person � Elvis. She went to see Impey to ask for his help, but he had problems of his own at that time. His role on the committee for the festival was proving to be much more problematic than he ever thought. The fact that they actually expected him to do things was the first major problem. The latest one concerned the host for the big drinking contest. They had hired a famous celebrity called Sugar for the job. She did a Christmas special called �Sugar�s Family Christmas�, and she cried non-stop throughout the show because of a memory of her last family Christmas. It was filmed in September, but none of the production team noticed the crying until the show was broadcast on Christmas Day. It got very high ratings, and the constant crying didn�t do her career any harm. The organisers of the festival decided to cash in on this. The drinking contest was to have a Christmas theme � the contestants were supposed to dress as Santa or reindeer or elves. But Sugar wasn�t happy when she found out about this. She was on the phone to Impey just before Gabrielle went to see him, and all he could make out through the tears was that she was pulling out of the contest. So he had to find a replacement at the last minute and he couldn�t help thinking that it was going to involve doing something. But then Gabrielle came along and said, �Elvis, you�ve got to help me. Someone is trying to kill my grandfather and the outlook for tomorrow is for more showers. You�ve got to do something.�

Impey noticed that she was even better looking than Sugar, and he saw a way of solving two problems without really doing anything. He took her to meet a woman and said, �This is� she�s� instead of Sugar��

Gabrielle ended up hosting the drinking contest. She made numerous references to the weather, and this is what got her the job as a weathergirl. At the end of the night, �Sir James� was still alive, and she thanked Impey for saving him. Martin proposed to her three months later. They ran home during torrential rain, and their feet got wet when they passed the broken drainpipe on the corner of a narrow lane. She said, �Heavy showers this evening, but some bright spots too.� And then he proposed when they got home, and she said, �Sunshine for years to come.� He took that as a yes.

On morning after Gabrielle�s appearance in the shop, Harry was standing behind the counter and Rita Smith walked in.

�Rita, nice to see you in this neck of the woods,� Harry said.

�Hello Mr. Edwards.� She didn�t sound too happy, but Harry knew enough to know he didn�t know enough about other people to decipher anything from their tone of voice.

Rita put the newspaper on the counter. �I wasn�t particularly impressed with your little stunt.�

�It wasn�t really a stunt. It was more of a public relations exercise to express our gratitude to our customers for��

�Don�t think you can beat me at the publicity game. I�m an expert, a professional. If I called you an amateur I�d be insulting other amateurs. I mean, look at this place; it�s a dump. How many times has this shop been robbed?�

Harry wasn�t sure where this was going, but he answered anyway. �Never, as far as I know.�

�Exactly. Who�d want to rob a dump like this? I�ve been robbed six times so far this year. I�ve been shot ten times in the past three years.�

�Really? How have you survived?�

�I�ve always managed to take the bullets in the head.�

�And you�re still healthy?�

�Fit as a fiddle.�

�No brain injuries?�

�Nothing. Although my husband keeps telling me I�m going mad, but what would he know; he died ten years ago. But the point is, Mr. Edwards, don�t mess with me. I�ll show you what real publicity is all about.�

�Go on; do your best. I�m not afraid. It�s going to take a lot to beat an appearance by Gabrielle. She�s one of the most popular people in the town.�

�Yeah, maybe you�re right� Oh well, I suppose I�ll have a go anyway and hope for the best. And you know what they say: if you can�t beat them, shoot them. Goodbye, Mr. Edwards.�

Rita left the shop. Harry might not have been particularly good when it came to judging other people�s moods or thoughts, or judgements of morals or distance, or decision-making, or remembering things, but the otherwise wise Harry knew enough to know when to be worried, and he knew he should be worried about Rita.

But business in the shop had never been better, and Harry soon forgot about Rita�s threat. He never had to put much effort into forgetting things; he was blessed. Barbara wasn�t so lucky. Rita�s threat was always at the back of her mind even as her attentions were directed towards adjusting to this sudden change in her daily routine. In the five years she had been working in the shop it had never been as busy as this. People were buying everything, which caused a bit of confusion because most of the stock hadn�t been re-priced since the Euro changeover. Some of the stock was priced in shillings.

Barbara also had to get used to the prospect that the shop could be a viable business, rather than something kept going out of habit. This thought had no effect on Roy but it stirred Barbara�s sense of initiative and she decided to undertake a simultaneous re-pricing and stocktaking of every item in the shop. Harry was all for the idea, and offered to help in any way he could. On one Tuesday morning she set about the task, starting in the darkest corner. Beneath the lowest shelf, where the floorboards were rotting, the first thing she found was the remains of a cardboard box, and she got the feeling that there wouldn�t be much in the way of stocktaking or re-pricing in this job.