Pam and Taff Jones: HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY

IN SEARCH OF LEPRECHAUNS

In a deep sleep, snuggled under the duvet cuddled to Taff, I felt something pounce on the bed, then a wet nose touch mine, before feeling a soft furry head bonk.

“Meeeeeoooooooow.”

It was Nancy Jones, our fluffball of a pussycat. I smiled and returned her affection with lots of kisses and strokings.

“Happy Saint Patrick’s Day mummy,” said Nancy in a whisper.

“Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you too,” I replied with a smile.

That’s why she’d woken me up early. It was Saint Patrick’s day (St Patrick the patron saint of Ireland) and I’d made her a promise. As a Jones we always kept our promises, as a ‘promise made is a debt unpaid’. Today we were going in search of leprechauns.

Taff had planned to continue writing his book in peace and quiet while us girls went out for the day; so I decided to let him sleep in, snoring his head off.

Having brushed my teeth and showered I donned the day’s uniform – black leggings and matching long sleeved t-shirt, with hair tied back. The attire was the agreed ‘ninja’ colouring, not only to coordinate with Nancy but to endeavour to remain undetected, as we’d heard leprechauns were particularly tricky to catch.

As Nancy munched on cat food and biscuits noisily, I grabbed a cup of tea and a couple of bananas. There was no time for anything extravagant. Sitting quietly, listening to the blackbirds singing I read the literature Nancy had printed off the internet during the night whilst I’d been asleep.

I didn’t know much about leprechauns, I must admit; and although Nancy had done a stirling job with her research, we had very little to go on. I made a mental note of the pertinent points. Leprechauns are old, small and mainly wear green – green hat, green coat, green trousers – to set off their gorgeous red hair and beards, with nice shiny buckles on their hat and shoes. As their name suggests, leprechaun or leath bhrogan means shoemaker, so they spend most of their time making shoes, aside from guarding their pot of gold, hidden at the end of a rainbow. They also love practical jokes and getting intoxicated on their home-brewed poteen. Strangely, only male leprechauns have ever been spotted in Ireland and rarely are they ever caught. Yet, if caught, the leprechaun has the magical power to grant three wishes.

I got my thinking cap on. This was going to be harder than I’d first thought. We were hunting on a budget, so flying to Ireland was out of the question. And although leprechauns were unheard of in England, the concept was not an impossibility as we had many magical rainbows throughout the year.

I jotted down our skills. Nancy was renowned for being intelligent; and having read Taff’s volume of books (Tales of Nancy Jones) I knew that she could speak to gnomes. Now I know gnomes are different to leprechauns, but I figured Nancy’s skills were transferrable. I, not so intelligent, had searched and hunted down over 60 trees in the UK with Taff, with only a picture and brief location to go on. So my map reading skills and determination were useful attributes also. But we needed someone else, another strong minded female who could solve crimes, as the power of three (as seen on TV programmes like Charlie’s Angels or Charmed) I believed would be the key to our success. I picked up the phone and dialled.

“Hello, Emma Curtis speaking.”

Taff had spent a lot of time with Emma writing down her adventures in The Emma Curtis Trilogy, so she was a good friend of the family and I knew she had the skills we needed for our quest.

I managed to persuade Emma that here pyjama veg-out day could be postponed for a few hours, so she agreed to give us two hours of her time. Great on one hand, as we now had ‘the power of three’ but not so great as we only had two hours to find a leprechaun.

At 10am on the dot, we all met up at the rendezvous, a local café that sold home-made cakes and hot chocolate topped with cream and dark chocolate drops.

Although, in theory, animals weren’t allowed in the café, having put a high visibility coat on Nancy together with a dog lead , I explained to the owner that she was a ‘cat for the blind’ and we were training her. The owner of the café looked a little surprised, but when she saw that Emma was wearing dark glasses (they were actually sunglasses), the woman believed our story. I hate lying, but surmised that this was just a fib, as our cause was great, for if we did catch a leprechaun and have our three wishes we could end the world’s poverty, end all wars and all live in harmony.

I sat across the table from Nancy and Emma while we got our heads together. Pulling out the laptop, I looked at the weather forecast… sun and blue skies all day. “Drat, no rainbows,” I thought. I then googled ‘shoemakers’ but none existed in the city, only ‘shoe repairers’. Emma then thought of a good suggestion,

“What about hairdressers?”

Eventually I twigged what she was talking about. As leprechauns always want to look their best, particularly on St Patrick’s day, being aged they’d obviously want to touch up their grey hairs with ginger dye. We then realised however that if they did attend a hairdresser they’d be easily caught and so instead would have already purchased their no ammonia, bright red, home application dye, in disguise, from the local supermarket or chemist.

Traipsing round all the Portsmouth pubs was also a no go, if we were to catch a leprechaun celebrating, as leprechauns made home brew they didn’t need to go to a local inn, they had plenty of spirit at home to entertain themselves.

We ordered two more hot chocolates for Emma and me, and a milk for Nancy, plus another two slices of banoffee pie for the humans.

The two hours whizzed by. With only five minutes to go before noon, our deadline, I heard a cry which made me jump.

“Meeeeoooow,” said Nancy. “What about the local Irish club? Prrrrrr.”

“By jove you’re a genius,” I said, gobbling down the last piece of pie.

It took us only a minute to walk down to the club. Normally we wouldn’t have been let in, as we weren’t Irish, or direct descendents from Ireland, however as the doorman recognised the famous Emma Curtis, they allowed the three of us in.

I looked left, Emma looked right and Nancy straight on, as we climbed the steps into the revelling crowd of green, celebrating not only St Patrick’s Day but also winning the Rugby Six Nations Championship.

At the strike of twelve, by the time we’d arrived at the bar, it was too late, he’d gone. All that was left was an extra tall bar-stool, an empty pint of Guinness and one small silver shilling accompanied by a larger gold coin, both covered in magic leprechaun dust.