They spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how they�re going to pay Jimmy and his brother, but they can�t think of anything. It only takes about two seconds not to think of anything, so what are they going to do for the rest of the afternoon? Hilda tries sitting on the chair and counting the couch. One� two� three� But no, there�s really only one. The fox has taken the stapling gun and left them in a world without a stapling gun, a void. They know that something should be there, but they can�t quite say what it is. On other afternoons they�d be stapling things by now, but somehow they just can�t quite remember that. If they concentrated on it, they�d surely remember it, and realise that the void is caused by the absence of the stapling gun, but they can�t concentrate because of the song that�s constantly in their heads: �The Fox has Taken the Stapling Gun�. They�re not paying close attention to the song because they�re trying to figure out what used to fill the void. The song could probably tell them the answer to that, and where to find the stapling gun.

Time flies by when they spend an afternoon stapling things, but it moves slowly today. Hilda rings the bell for the butler to bring them tea, but the butler, Thomas, doesn�t respond.

Thomas is really just a ladder. At this moment he�s leaning against a cupboard in the kitchen, ignoring the bell. This is how Thomas spends most of his time � leaning against things � but the sisters still pay him. He�s been with the family for years.

One of the maids hears the bell and brings them their tea. They sit down on the sofas in the drawing room, but Abigail is missing. A few minutes later, she rushes into the room holding a jar. �I�ve got it!� she says. �Do ye remember the time I slipped on a banana skin and ended up causing �7875.64 worth of damage?�

�Yes.�

�Well guess how much �7875.64 is in euro.�

�Turquoise?� Hilda says.

�Exactly! Ten thousand euros!�

�What�s the point of all this?�

�The point is, I still have the banana skin! Look, it�s in this jar. This banana skin is worth ten thousand euro!�

�That�s brilliant!�

They go straight to Jimmy and pay him with the banana skin. He�s a little speechless � he obviously wasn�t expecting to be paid so soon. He says, �I�m� I�m� I�m�� �Speechless� is obviously the word he�s looking for.

They go home, happy to have this worry behind them. Alan looks out the window of the library. He�s relieved that Abigail thought of the banana skin, because he couldn�t think of anything. Every time they�ve needed money in the past, he�s always been able to come up with something, but they�ve gone through virtually every money-making scheme now. A few years ago he went on a quiz show on TV where every time a contestant �buzzes� in, bees are released. There�s a fair chance they�ll get stung, so it�s up to the contestant to decide if it�s worth answering the question. Alan put on a set of fake lips and a hat when he went on the show. He didn�t know most of the answers, but he kept buzzing in. Towards the end he just kept his buzzer pressed down all of the time and the bees filled the studio. The other contestants pulled out and Alan won the prize money. But since then they�ve introduced a rule banning all non-human entrants, and they test contestants on that too.

An hour after they left Jimmy, he�s at the front door with the banana skin. He talks to Alan in the drawing room.

�I�ve just been to the bank,� he says, �and, the trouble is, they refuse to cash this banana skin.�

�Bloody banks. Won�t they lodge it in your account?�

�No, they refuse to take it at all. Y� see, the thing is, it�s like��

�Oh I know what it is. Because it�s not the new currency they won�t accept it any more.�

�That�s it, yeah.�

�Damn! If only we�d thought of that before the deadline for changing to the euro passed.�

�Yeah. So effectively this is worthless now.� Jimmy hands the jar with the banana skin back to Alan.

�Okay. Sorry about that.�

�Don�t mention it.�

�We�ll get you the money.�

�I don�t doubt that for a second.�

�We asked the girls� uncle for the money, or at least we tried, but it�s impossible to say anything to him. He�s too obsessed by cigars. He never listens when you talk to him. But we�ll get you the money somehow.�

Alan opens a door in a sideboard and puts the jar inside. Jimmy can see piles of cash in the sideboard.

Alan closes the door and turns around. �I�ve just thought of something.� He goes over to the mantle piece and picks up an ashtray. �The girls� father once won ten thousand pounds playing poker in this very room. This ashtray was on the poker table, and he put the money on it while he was lighting his pipe, but there was a cigarette butt in the ashtray that hadn�t been put out properly, and the money caught fire. Look, these are the very ashes from that fire, but you can�t tell whether they�re old money or new money. If you took these to the bank and told them they�re euros, they might accept them. It�s worth a try anyway.�

Jimmy looks at the ashes for a while and says, �Yeah, it�s worth a try. I�ll take the ashes.�

Jimmy takes the ashtray and leaves. Alan calls the sisters into the drawing room and tells them about the bank not accepting the banana skin, and the ashtray. The sisters are happy at first, but as the evening goes by they think about the ashtray a lot, and they start to miss it because it always reminded them of their father, Andrew. They look up at his portrait over the mantle piece. He was one of the greatest political leaders this country ever had. And people said he�d never succeed in politics after he lost his shoulder in a war, but he got a dog to sit there and pretend to be his shoulder. Not because he wanted to succeed in politics � he just wanted a shoulder. But people thought it was because he wanted to succeed in politics, and somehow or other he did, even though he had no desire whatsoever for the political life. Somehow he became leader of the country, and a very successful one too. The dog caused a few problems over the years, as they went higher up the political ladder. When the dog realised he was an actor he had the combined ego of an actor and a politician. He joined an actors union, and demanded higher pay and more time off. He once went on strike just before a Party Conference. After that he got his own dressing room, and more lines too. The dog ended up delivering speeches that were completely unnecessary for a shoulder.

Despite the fact that he wasn�t happy in his role, Andrew introduced some significant reforms during his years in office. One of the first problems he faced after coming into office was what to do about a place called Stuck-Pup Point. Nobody could say why it was called Stuck-Pup point. The name seems to have originated about a hundred and fifty years ago, but ever since then, a lot of puppies have become stuck there. There are no records of puppies going anywhere near the place before it was called Stuck-Pup Point. It was heartbreaking, to see all those puppies lost and lonely in the trees, miles away from civilisation. Previous governments had hired teams of babysitters to stay in lookout shelters and look after any stuck puppies. They did nothing about the cats on Spinning Cat Peak because the puppies were much cuter than the cats, and the public had much more sympathy for the stuck puppies (they somehow felt that it was the cats� own fault for spinning at Spinning Cat Peak). Earlier governments had noticed how names could be so significant in shaping public opinion. Instead of doing something about Growing-Unemployment Mountain, they renamed it Kitten-in-Ribbon Hill. So it was public sympathy and the desire to do as little as possible that shaped the actions of governments.

When Andrew came to power, the government was spending a fortune on babysitters for the puppies. The problem of the cats at Spinning Cat Peak was getting out of control and nothing was being done about it. And Kitten-in-Ribbon Hill was getting bigger all the time.

Andrew came up with an ingenious solution. He made a speech in which he claimed that the cats on Spinning Cat Peak were an endangered species. He said that every day, an area of spinning cats the size of two football pitches was being destroyed, and he blamed this on the fact that the cats didn�t have anyone to look after them, like the puppies. Before too long, the spinning cats would become extinct.

He knew that the cats would never get the same public sympathy that the puppies got, so there would be no demand to spend public money on them, but the conscience of rich people would be touched by the idea that the spinning cats were on the verge of extinction, and so it was. A fund was set up to save the spinning cats. People were asked to sponsor a babysitter for a cat and they had a huge response � they even had to add in a few more spinning cats. This greatly reduced the number of people out of work. The only problem was that most of the applicants for the new jobs had no experience in babysitting spinning cats.

It was one of his daughters who gave Andrew the idea for a solution to this problem. When Annabel was young she believed that the night came on and off by turning a valve in the hall. She was young at the time. She found out the truth in her thirties. This idea of the valve for night time and the problem of Stuck-Pup Point gave Andrew an idea to solve all of the problems. The puppies on Stuck-Pup Point were quite happy by day. They�d chase each other through the trees and roll around in the grass, or just lie in the sun. It was only at night that they got scared. Andrew came up with the idea of telling the puppies that every evening as the sun goes down, a valve would be turned that would turn on Christmas Eve. He thought that they wouldn�t be scared if they thought it was Christmas Eve � they�d be too excited. Andrew announced this policy in a speech, but his shoulder had been asleep during the meeting in which the speech was written. It started reading ahead in the text as Andrew was delivering the speech. The shoulder didn�t realise that the valve wasn�t real. It got very excited and started reading out bits of the speech itself. Towards the end, Andrew had to stop reading and just let his shoulder read out the rest of it. But this worked out for the best because the shoulder�s enthusiasm was genuine. People thought that if a shoulder could get so excited about it, then it must be good for the puppies.

And so it proved. The puppies got so excited about Christmas that they forgot all their fears of the night. All they could think about was the arrival of Santa. They�d run around so much that they�d tire themselves out and fall asleep before it even got dark. The advantage of this was that they only needed two or three babysitters to stay at Stuck-Pup Point, and all they really needed to do was turn on the valve every evening (they had an actual valve to make it seem more real for the puppies). All of the other babysitters were transferred over to Spinning Cat Peak, and they were able to train the new babysitters.

As the years went by, the shoulder�s enthusiasm for its role grew, but Andrew�s diminished. Towards the end he sometimes let his shoulder make speeches for him, and when he did make speeches himself he just didn�t pay enough attention to them. He once made a speech about toes when he should have been talking about trees. He wasn�t paying attention and he thought it was Toe-Me Day, but it was really Tree-Easy Day, in support of trees. Someone in the audience took out a calculator. He did the calculations, stood up and said, �Hey, he�s talking about toes.�

Andrew looked down at his shoulder, but the shoulder didn�t know what to do. The press made a big deal of it, and the pressure on him to retire increased.

The current leader, Ginger Ethos, was just starting out as a member of parliament when Andrew retired. No one thought he�d ever succeed in politics either, but he�s managed to keep his problem out of the public eye. The sisters know about it � they once saw it when he came to visit the house. The problem is that when someone else pretends to be Ginger, he starts talking in a Japanese accent. It�s almost as if he�s naturally Japanese, but he thinks it�s his job to be Ginger Ethos � when someone does that job for him he reverts to being Japanese. The sisters saw this when he came to stay in the house for a weekend and there was a political satire show on TV. Someone was impersonating him, and he started saying things in a Japanese accent. Their father must have felt some sympathy for him, having to take on a role that doesn�t feel real.