Burley Cross Postbox Theft (35 page)

Then it suddenly struck me (with a sense of almost thudding dismay) that here I was – in all my hubris and my insolence – expecting the humble earwig (a mere
insect)
to step up to the plate and take exactly the kinds of life-altering decisions that I have always been signally incapable of making myself! Because sometimes
I
feel as though I had a pair of wings on my back – folded up but never opened, never tried, never extended, never truly and fully stretched out…

Have you ever felt that way yourself, Teddy?

On a more cheerful note (and much as it galls me to admit it), Baxter Thorndyke has definitely been of some positive use in this regard. He’s helped to snap me out of my funk (to pull me – kicking and screaming – out of my rut). As you know, I’ve always had my misgivings about the man. I’m not sure if we really see eye to eye on an emotional or intellectual level – and certainly not politically! It’s principally a ‘social’ connection, a ‘local’ connection, engendered, in the main, by my deep admiration for his prodigious energy – his enviable vitality.

There’s certainly no denying his magnetism. He’s deeply – even dangerously – charismatic (although cut more along the lines of ‘a pocket Stalin’ than a young Guevara, to be frank!).

I’m still somewhat at odds to understand what it is, at root, that drives him. I remain to be convinced that his motivation is entirely altruistic. But then who am I of all people (the personification of somnolence and ennui!) to stand in judgement on such matters?!

You may well remember that our ‘partnership’ (such as it is) began during his campaign to preserve the village’s grass verges. Joanna and I happened to have just such a verge outside our cottage, and were often frustrated to find people (generally tourists) parking their vehicles hard up against it before setting off on a ramble or a hike on the moor. The verge would
invariably be either crushed or irreparably dented, and a considerable amount of work was involved in setting it right.

By and large the campaign (which consisted of a series of rehearsed, public ‘interventions’, a small flurry of newspaper articles, a firmly worded ‘Statement of Intent’ placed in a prominent position on the notice board outside the PO, and some tastefully produced, portable, plastic signs – on supporting spikes – to be pushed into the more vulnerable verges as a warning during wet weekends and Bank Holidays etc.) has been very successful, although there have, inevitably, been some notable casualties.

Wincey Hawkes (the landlady of our local pub, The Old Oak), came in for a bit of stick in this regard. She’s been encouraging coach parties to stop in the village (over recent months) and several prominent, central verges have suffered quite badly as a consequence. Don’t quote me on this, but I get the general impression that her trade has been rather poor of late (especially after that unholy bust-up following the darts competition on Dec 12th: a succession of tabloid-style ‘pub from hell’ headlines in the local rag are hardly conducive to an increase in your overall customer base, I’d have thought!).

Poor Wincey. From what I’ve heard on the grapevine, she’s still struggling to pay off the loans they took out for the extensive ‘improvements’ to the pub instituted by her late husband, Duke, who – just by the by – cultivated the most bitter and rancorous feud with Baxter while he was still alive. The two men quite literally loathed each other!

From what I can recall, Baxter was accused of using his influence on council to block the expansion of the pub car park. Duke was furious about it. His response was to spontaneously compose and perform a series of the most filthy songs about Mr Thorndyke – to general acclaim – while perched at his harmonium on the saloon bar!

He truly was a most extraordinary sight! While playing this wheezing instrument (and due to his enormous girth, he wasn’t
entirely immune to emitting the odd wheeze himself) he looked not unlike an over-extended walrus, gently tinkering with a walnut!

A remarkable man, and greatly missed (but I do seem to be getting slightly drawn off the subject here) …

Baxter’s other notable campaign – against speeding in the village – has likewise had a pretty positive impact. Not so much in preventing the aforementioned traffic from taking this slightly shorter route (BC is favoured by ‘boy racers’ – and more sober folk who really should know better – as a short cut), but in giving people a sense of empowerment, a feeling that they are taking action themselves rather than just sitting back and letting standards slip.

My most significant involvement with Baxter, to date, has, of course, been with the BCPTW – his campaign to ‘clean up’ the local public toilets (which are located just at the end of Fitzwilliam St).

Given that these facilities are the only public lavatories for many miles around, they are naturally considered a vital resource for tourists, ramblers and local tradesmen alike, but they have also become the backdrop for what I shall simply call ‘more nefarious’ pursuits.

I must confess that I hadn’t even really registered this unsavoury underground activity until Baxter first drew it to my attention (during a National RSPB-sponsored Big Garden Birdwatch Campaign at the end of January; we were part of an elite team of volunteers tabulating the number of wild birds in a small area of common ground directly behind the toilets at the time), but since he did, I have become increasingly preoccupied by the amount of undesirable ‘traffic’ these toilets seem to attract.

Sometimes I drive my car up there (it’s only a distance of thirty or so yards from our cottage, in actual fact) and park it in the designated zone to try and get a proper sense of how bad the problem really is. I have started taking notes – writing down the car registration details of the men who enter the facilities
and then seem to be taking a suspiciously long time to reappear.

I showed this information to Baxter and he was very pleased and impressed by my levels of diligence, and promptly set up a BCPTW website on the back of it (another example of that boundless energy I keep harping on about!)! He even went so far as to appoint me ‘chair’ of the committee (a kind gesture, but an empty one, given that there are currently only three members, all told!).

As a part of our overall strategy, Baxter then suggested that we might start taking surreptitious photographs of the worst of the offenders in order to establish some kind of a formal, visual record of the main participants in these degenerate activities. I was initially a little slow to warm to the idea, but after he invested some committee funds in a digital camera, and acquainted me with the fundamentals of how to use it in the most effective way, I must confess that I’ve become quite the ‘secret snapper’ (taking some pretty impressive shots – even if I say so myself!)!

Of course the police refuse, point-blank, to consider amateur photographic evidence as a sufficient incentive to take these vermin to court. It’s deeply frustrating, but Baxter still feels it may serve a purpose (could be a useful resource to use as a ‘bargaining counter’, for example, and to show the police – and the perpetrators – that we are deadly serious in our concerns about the matter).

My experiences at the toilets have certainly proved to be quite an eye-opener. I’ve been astonished by how many local men are frequenting these facilities on a regular basis. Many of them bring their dogs along – as a kind of ‘cover’. I’m presuming that a good proportion of these gentlemen are married and pretending to their ignorant spouses that they are out on the moor, exercising their benighted (and patently neglected) animals, while what they are actually doing is driving them over to the toilets, ‘parking up’ and then leaving the poor, confused creatures mouldering away inside the car for hours!

I made the mistake of mentioning this gruesome scenario to
Joanna (who had hitherto remained determinedly disinterested in the matter, being very much of the ‘well, if they’re not hurting anybody…’ frame of mind) and she quite literally went ballistic (proving – if proof were needed – that while people are perfectly welcome to do pretty much what they like to each other in Jo’s book – however sick or perverse it might be – once a dumb animal gets tangled up in the equation… Well, you’d better watch out!).

I suppose it was partly as a consequence of Jo’s avowed militancy on the issue that I felt compelled (almost against my better instincts) to take some direct action in this regard during an especially bad instance of what I perceived as ‘serious neglect’ a few weeks ago.

I had observed a man – youthful, brown-haired, quite fit and handsome, dressed for hiking – entering the toilets at approximately 14.00 hrs on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. He was driving a dark, metallic-green hatchback (some kind of Hyundai, I think). When he initially pulled up I noticed that he had a very beautiful, large and finely bred Red Setter accompanying him.

I ducked down in my seat upon his arrival (so as not to be observed) and took a couple of preliminary shots (he definitely looked familiar to me – I presumed I’d probably seen him loitering in the vicinity before), then kept my eyes firmly trained on the toilets for the next fifteen or so minutes, patiently waiting for him to re-emerge.

After he had been gone for five minutes (tops), I noticed that his dog was growing increasingly distressed (I was busily scribbling down his registration number at the time; I have a very handy ‘single binocular’ – a ‘mono-ocular’, I suppose you’d call it – a tiny black telescope which I bought at Millets for specifically this purpose). The dog was shifting around, frantically, in the back of the car and pawing at the window. Eventually it began barking, mutedly (but emphatically) through the glass.

As the minutes gradually ticked by, the dog became more and more hysterical, leaving slicks of foam on the window, even hurling itself against the car’s interior bodywork (principally the wire mesh that separated the poor deranged beast from the rest of the car’s interior).

Enough was enough! Disturbed and infuriated, I climbed out of my car and walked over to the Hyundai to try and calm the Setter down. It clawed at the window, still more frantically, upon my arrival. I tried to talk to it through the glass, but it simply ignored me (far too agitated). I cursed under my breath, impotently, and was about to turn towards the toilets (intent on heading in there and confronting the owner directly), when I noticed – with some astonishment – that the car was actually unlocked!

At this point (and don’t ask me why – I can’t really
say
why) I found myself applying some slight pressure to the back handle, twisting at it, gingerly, and feeling the mechanism of the lock unlatching itself with a smooth, satisfying
clunk
.

I suppose (in retrospect) that my instinctive aim was to open up the door by a couple of inches simply to try and give the dog a bit of fresh air, or perhaps to talk to it, soothingly, through the gap, and – if it didn’t seem unduly snappy or aggressive – to pat it or stroke it to try and ease its distress.

No sooner had the mechanism sounded, however, than the dog (a large animal – larger, even, than you might imagine) had thrown its entire body-weight against the door and had violently burst its way out – sending me flying (I landed flat on my back)!

Before I could so much as draw breath – let alone clamber to my feet again – it had bolted off, at speed, into the undergrowth (following a route I presume it knew all too well, down a nearby moorland path and then up on to the moor itself). I remained seated on the ground for a few seconds, somewhat dazed and confused, then quickly scrambled to my feet, breathless and slightly flustered.

What now? I glanced around me, nervously. How to proceed from here with the absolute minimum of fuss and embarrassment? Did I quickly shut the boot (carefully wiping my fingerprints off the handle with my shirt sleeve) or just leave it gaping open (as if the dog had – by some miraculous fluke – managed to release the mechanism by itself)? Did I pursue the dog on foot and attempt to retrieve it (but what chance was there of that when I didn’t have a lead to attach to its collar, or even know the name to call out?)? Did I try and alert the owner, or simply (the cowardly option, perhaps) head back to my car and lie low (or nonchalantly drive home, as if none of this had ever happened)?

I scanned the horizon for any witnesses. The coast seemed clear. I then quickly wiped the door handle with my handkerchief (better safe than sorry!), drew a long, deep breath, smoothed down my hair (or what remains of it!) and headed back to my car, fully intent on beating a hasty retreat. I’d barely taken five steps towards the car, however, before I was tormented by sudden, violent pangs of conscience. How could I possibly just walk away from this? Wouldn’t that simply be wrong of me? Even criminal (delinquent, immoral?)?!

I stopped dead in my tracks and then turned, with a grimace, to face the toilet block. What would Joanna do, I wondered? How would ‘St’ Joanna behave under such trying circumstances?

Need I even ask?! I gazed over at the block for several seconds, vacillating wildly, then swallowed down my qualms and set off, determinedly, towards it.

It’s difficult to describe at this point – with any real clarity or lucidity – the extraordinary series of events (one might almost call them ‘phantasmagorical’ or ‘hallucinogenic’, even ‘chimerical’) that now commenced to unfold around me (everything still remains such a strange, unconsolidated mess – a blur – in my mind, so please do your best to bear with me, Teddy). Suffice to say that I coughed, sharply, several times,
before first entering the men’s lavatories. I may even have stamped the mud off my boots (although I wasn’t actually wearing boots) and whistled, nonchalantly, to telegraph the fact that my intentions were entirely legitimate, above-board and non-predatory. The door, as I recollect, felt extremely heavy against my shoulder as I pushed up against it, and opened with a loud, heartfelt – almost ecstatic – groan.

On entering the block, ‘proper’, I rapidly glanced around me, fully tensed, expecting to see the dog’s owner lounging against the latrine, or standing by the sink, but there was no immediate sign of him. I suppose I could have just called out something (in retrospect, I think that would’ve been the most sensible plan of action). I could have called out something like ‘Hello? Is anybody there? I’ve just come from the car park where there’s been a most unfortunate mishap involving a dog…’ (I’ve rehearsed this scenario since, a thousand times, in my mind.) But I didn’t. I didn’t speak. I just glanced around me, slightly spooked. Then I walked over to the latrine (it seemed the obvious thing to do – I was nervous, my bladder was full and I desperately needed to relieve myself).