‘It’s like being in Midsomer Murders,’ remarked our friend Sarah after her first day staying with us. By the end of her visit, she tasked us with three objectives. Find out why a wild man rampaged across our front garden. Take a photograph of the village’s animal cult. And confirm if it was or wasn’t the new curate who nearly mowed us down on a country lane.
Sarah’s visit started with a mystery. She disappeared.
We knew for a fact she was on the train when it left Tiverton. But when it pulled out of Taunton, there was no Sarah. We waited and waited, till the final stragglers drifted out of the station. Of our friend, there was no sign. Neither were there any responses to messages and phone calls. She’d vanished.
Either she’d fallen asleep/passed out between Tiverton and Taunton and was now continuing to London; been kidnapped by the Taunton Liberation Group; had an accident getting off the train and was receiving treatment on platform 5; or she’d taken the wrong exit, a 50/50 possibility for most people, an 80/20 one in Sarah’s case. Andy squeezed through the barriers and went to investigate. That’s when Sarah appeared from entirely the wrong direction. Andy was now missing, just as my phone froze, so I couldn’t let her know our errant friend had turned up.
Relieved yet baffled, I asked Sarah how she managed to survive a year on a remote island in the Pacific (she recently completed a stint for New Zealand’s VSA) yet not find her way out of Taunton Train Station, while she berated me for not providing accurate travel information. Touché. My phone started working, Andy turned up, we all hugged. All was well with the world.
Mystery 1: Almost roadkill
A dull morning turned into a sunny afternoon, so we took Sarah on a walk through the village and into the surrounding countryside, sticking to narrow lanes. There isn’t much traffic around here. When a car/tractor does appear, there’s a standard drill. The vehicle slows down and we get out of the way at the most appropriate point in the lane. If there’s a wide bit or a verge, we use that. However, there are sections with no passing areas where the banks at the side of the road are high. At one of these, where the canopy creates a long verdant tunnel, we spotted a car enter the leafy avenue a couple of hundred yards ahead. Taking our time (we’ve learnt it’s essential to give drivers enough time to spot us) we moved to the side of the road and clambered up the bank, clinging to branches to hold us in position, expecting the car to slow down as it drew closer. It didn’t. It hurtled toward us at speed. Sarah stuck out her hand and the car bucked to an emergency stop right beside us. With the three of us hanging from the branches like startled chimps, the window rolled down and a shocked woman gushed an apology, saying she hadn’t spotted us, which was worrying as the three of us had filled the width of the narrow lane and it wasn’t dark. There was a man beside her and either one or two wide-eyed and pale-faced children in the back.
I suggested she must have been distracted by her passengers. Andy and Sarah were more generous, saying the tree tunnel may have made it difficult for her to spot us. As we dissected what had just happened, we realised the driver bore a passing resemblance to the photo of the new curate we’d just seen on an info board in the church grounds.
Mystery 2: The Furries
There are a group of animal children in the village, kids who go around wearing big ears and bushy animal tails. At least one may be a teenager, which makes their strange appearance even more disconcerting. Why they dress like animals, I don’t know. When I told Sarah about them, her instant response was the same as when I told my sister – ‘Get a photo.’ My reaction to both was also the same. ‘No chuffing way. Think about it for a moment, and why doing that could turn out really, really badly for me.’ So, you’re going to have to take my word we have an animal cult in the village. Whether they are linked to werewolf-like cries (see the opening scenes to An American Werewolf in London) Andy and I heard in the middle of the night recently, I couldn’t say. There are also tales of devil dogs in the nearby hills, so that may have been them. Sadly, Sarah didn’t get to see the animal children for herself, but they are connected to mystery number three.
Mystery 3: The Madman in the Garden
As we relaxed in the living room following our walk and flirtation with becoming roadkill, there was a strange noise outside, animalistic and a sort of clip-clopping.
‘It’s the furries,’ I shouted, running to the window, excited at the prospect of being able to prove I wasn’t making up the existence of animal children. Sarah joined me, just in time to hear a bellow and see a man rampage across our front garden just a couple of feet in front of us. It was our neighbour. He was in pursuit of a grey cat belonging to the neighbour on the other side and was in such a temper, he looked ready to kill something, which was unusual as he is normally one of the most laidback people going. Both he and the cat disappeared and we’ve yet to find out the reason for the furious chase. My money is on it involving an audacious feline raid on next door’s Sunday dinner.
Sarah’s now moved on, leaving Andy and I with three mini mysteries to solve from one day in the life of a sleepy Somerset village.
