Strange Rumblings

Here at Turn Up we like to keep our eyes to the ground. No, eyes are all over the place; ears are to the ground. We have a number of shadow departments, in fact, all of which operate in the background to keep the bit you see running smoothly, rather like the below-water portion of an iceberg. One such department is Surveillance. No, we don’t waste our time in clandestine operations watching people, not unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Anyway, I was on duty last week when it came to my attention that unusual movements were due to occur on Saturday near Burford in Oxfordshire. I seconded my dearest into the subterfuge and she drove us out to a small hamlet where the swollen River Windrush swept beneath a Cotswold stone bridge. A swan bobbed beside a rustling reedbed. The sky was slate grey and bursts of rain raked our cheeks like shrapnel as we left the shelter of the car. As is often the case in these situations, a hostelry happened to occupy the nearest building so we went in to see what we could see. All was alarmingly normal, that is if the Daily Telegraph food writer signing copies of her latest book is to be regarded as normal. We approached the bar with assumed names and found that a table had been booked in those very names. The world waited for something to happen. We joined it, sure that we had picked up a trail of some sort.

It wasn’t long before our quarry showed themselves, darting for cover in out of the surrounding inclemency. Well, you can’t go anywhere these days without crossing paths with someone or other from the depths of time’s hinterland. Fragrant Mary was taken quite by surprise. Why that should have been so, accompanied as she was by that operator sine qua non, Mister Richardson, he himself a shadowy figure, is beyond the scope of our present abilities to answer. Things soon settled down, however, and she was to be observed cutting capers all afternoon, accompanied by an eager soundtrack of intense mastication.

We chewed the fat, we sucked the bones, we batted the breeze. We chased tails up hill and down dale, and round the houses. We had sorties, lunges, coughs and tea. Seeds for the future tumbled in profusion. We may have been no nearer to a conclusion, but the satisfaction is always to be had in the journey.