I know I’ve got a vivid imagination. It’s partly as a result of gorging far too much on a diet of James Bond movies and novels when I was young, and then Jason Bourne films and Mick Herron books in more recent years.
Rogue gunmen
Occasionally, I’ll test Andy’s readiness for having an escape route if, let’s say, a car containing members of SPECTRE appeared over the hill, bullets spraying from its windows. When I posed this question on a country lane on Zakynthos, prompted by seeing a hammer & sickle daubed on a wall, on our first holiday abroad together, she didn’t have a satisfactory answer.
‘What would you do?’ she asked.
‘Jump into that ditch, then roll under those shrubs and use them as a shield to make my getaway,’ I answered.
Andy peered into the ditch, noting the sludgy, stagnant water lining it. ‘There is no way I’m going in there,’ she declared.
‘In that case you’ll be riddled with bullets.’
Terrorists at the beach
Sunbathing in St Paul’s Bay on Lindos, I watched a Zodiac containing dodgy looking characters sail into the idyllic bay. They beached the craft at the far end of the bay, then proceeded to lug some heavy looking boxes onto a small, rocky plateau overlooking the crescent of sand.
I nudged Andy, rousing her from a sun-kissed slumber. ‘Just to give you advance warning, there might be terrorists setting up a machine gun at one end of the beach. Get ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ Andy asked, propping herself up on one elbow.
‘To take evasive action, duh!’
‘Take evasive action where? We’re on a beach. There’s nowhere to go.’
‘Here’s what you do. At my signal, roll off the sunbed and crawl as fast as you can into the water to this side of the stone jetty. They won’t be able to hit us there.’
‘You’re mad,’ Andy sighed, rolling onto her back to continue sunbathing while I monitored the suspicious behaviour of the terrorists, who turned out to be locals setting up a barbecue rather than a machine gun nest.
A state of readiness
Those were in our early days together. Years of travelling taught me spies and villains do not populate the world, at least not the circles we move in. I still toss the ‘escape route’ question her way though, usually when we’re walking along a country lane around us which is only the width of a car.
‘What would you do if the mad curate comes speeding along here and doesn’t spot us, like she did that time with Sarah?’ I’ll occasionally ask, to make sure she’s on her toes and ready to take evasive action. I just have to point out the ‘mad curate’ who nearly mowed us down wasn’t the curate at all, but I like the name, so it has stuck.
Anyway, sometimes things happen which have more substance than just a fertile imagination. Like the Chinese businessman in Beijing who, in a state of high anxiety, asked us to check the translation of an important business deal before he faxed it. Or the time a man whose family had connections to British intelligence gave me a spy camera to ‘look after.’
The mysterious map
The latest was the contents of our letterbox. Along with the junk mail was a map of our village (see image). Houses on it are shown as red dots. Some have house names handwritten beside them, but only some. Ours doesn’t. There was also a coded reference on the map. What does this tell us?
a) Only some houses are marked.
b) Somebody has scouted the village, identifying house names.
c) The reference number must mean something.
The first thing I did was to I search Google to see if the coded reference number threw up any results. It didn’t. Nada. We often get maps through the door, showing us where and when roads around the village will be closed. But this map is obviously about houses, not roads. Andy suggested it could be a plan for a leaflet drop. If so, why only target some houses and not them all? Andy’s next suggestion was it might be a list compiled by some religious organisation, Jehova’s or similar. Again, why only selective houses? Then there’s the question of how it ended up in our letterbox. Surely, accidentally. Some crime boss could be giving the hairdryer treatment to an incompetent minion at this very moment for misplacing the map of houses to rob.
All I know is, it is a plan of action of some sort. Whether unlawful or not, I have yet to ascertain.
