My brother Colm works as a gardener, and occasionally I give him a hand. One time we were on our way home and I was cycling through his iPod looking for music; I found an album of Irish music I wanted to listen to.

"I learnt quite a few tunes on the flute from this album, you'll probably recognise them", I said to Colm.

A mischievous grin spread across Colm's face. "Bet you I won't recognise them at all!" he says, and we both crack up laughing.

A few minutes later, when one of the tunes came on, I looked out of the corner of my eye at Colm to see was there any flicker of recognition. He was trying to hide a smile, because he didn't want me to know.

Another time we were laying a lawn and I was talking rather loudly, as is my wont sometimes.

"Shush, will you; ears have walls", Colm admonished me.

"Actually 'ears have walls' is probably more correct than 'walls have ears'; they only hear what they want to hear." I said.

"Bet you you're going to go home now and write all this up in your blog." Colm teased.

"Absolutely", I said, "Unless it ends up in my blog, it never happened."