It's a mystery

16th February 2025

It would be a lie to say that nothing has happened to rival the excitement of the flurry of geological activity last week, a lie because nothing has happened at all. However, in the interest of making it worth your while stopping by, I’ll just lay out a couple of little mysteries that you might be able to offer an insight on.

The first happened on Wednesday night, just after ten, when Stephen and Harry were coming back from their last little walk of the day and something ran across the driveway from outside the lumber room and into the barn. It’s not unusual for one of Mario and Luigi’s many farm cats to be hanging around there, but this, said Stephen, scurried away on two legs. “Could it have been one of their hens?” he wondered. Maybe, but we have never seen one down here; they prefer to wander the top of the lane, reducing the Jeep to a crawl to avoid turning them into escalopes.  He then suggested it could have been a pheasant, given its height, though as it didn’t wait for Stephen to get a tape measure and check, that too is debatable. We discounted the baby raptor theory – though if Jeff Goldblum turns up, we could be in big trouble.

The second mystery resurfaced on Friday, which was, of course. St Valentine’s Day. As ever, Stephen spoilt me with flowers and a selection of goodies from Flying Tiger. These included a bijou tin of biscuits, or what looked like biscuits. He had bought it in good faith, thinking they would make a little treat with my morning coffee, not realising till he looked at them again later that they were woodenl and meant for decorative purposes only. Shame really, as the Jammie Dodger looked particular appealing.

That was all first thing, and it was on our way back from our usual Friday morning business that we were a bit surprised to see a yellow recycling bag full of plastic leaning up against the wall where we leave our waste for collection. Surprised because it hadn’t been there when we set out, and hadn’t been there for the last nine or ten days after it had suddenly disappeared.

Stephen had stopped on his way home one evening last week, wondering where the bag, that he had left on his way to work after lunch, had got to. It had been a bit windy in the afternoon, though nothing like it can be, so he had a look around to see if it had been blown away. There was no sight of it, not even in the drainage channel where a bag has ended up on the odd occasion. We were puzzled; the only conclusion we could come up with was that for some reason they had run the collection in the evening rather than the next morning, but we weren’t convinced.

We were right not to be because there it was, a little bedraggled with bits of damp foliage sticking to it but otherwise intact. Where it had been and who had replaced it is a moot question, but short of undertaking house-to-house enquiries (though admittedly, that wouldn’t take long, just Mario and Luigi…) the only thing left was to take it back and put it out again the next time there is a plastic

Today has been a stay at home day, and while yesterday might not rank highly on the excitement scale for some, we found it pleasantly diverting. It started, in the morning, with taking Harry to the vet’s. He was fine, but now that all the pipettes of Advantix have been used it was time for him to be injected with this new, year-long anti-parasite serum. That was all done and dusted in ten minutes, leaving us more than enough time to call by the ecocentro to collect, at long last, this year’s supply of waste bags. That transaction also took only a few minutes as there were no other people queuing up, nor, it seemed, had there been over the previous two Saturdays. The computer printout the nice man was consulting showed very few signatures. Maybe everyone has made other arrangements, having become fed up with waiting.

We were out for dinner in the evening, and after manfully resisting the charms of DiverXo last weekend, we succumbed to the wiles of its rival, YaYa Sushi, and filled up on its all-you-can-eat menu (which, again, was quite a lot but not nearly as much as some, in comparison to whom we are mere amateurs). Really, though, it was to make going all that way to Girasole worthwhile as we only needed a couple things there, like stocking up on decent greetings cards from the bookshop and, much more importantly, some more face and beard cream from L’Erbolario… because how else do you think I still manage to pass for 43?