There is a scrunch of gravel!!!

I sprint down the secret path that leads to Short Tony's house, arriving breathless as he is getting out of his car.

"Did you get many geese then?" I blurt, casually.

His face falls like shares in a factory making plastic Chris Langhams for cereal packets. "It was a fiasco," he bemoans, rather than just moans, as it sounds moanier.

"No geese?" I ask, aghast.

"Not even one," he confirms.

I cannot believe that his long-awaited wild goose hunt has turned out to be a wild goose hunt. The bitter irony hangs in the air like a malignant helium balloon. I mutter some words of consolation and turn to slope back home.