A Thief in the Night

One of the problems of living in a very small village is that there are eyes watching your every move.       There is a Neighbourhood Watch sign just beyond the railway bridge, and they are not kidding.       

I suppose you could call these our next door neighbours, they are just across the field and over the stile.   A public footpath runs between their paddocks, it's one I often use.

The fat little pony and her companion, Wooster.    They all stop their grazing to watch the entertainment.

The pathway became difficult to navigate, it had been left to grow wild - think three foot high stinging nettles and hedges so overgrown that they almost met in the middle.



Sometime earlier this week the pathway fairy must have been, the hedges have been cut back, the whole long pathway strimmed and trimmed.     

A couple of hundred yards on and the pathway comes out almost opposite this pretty house.      No prying eyes here, the people have just moved out.        

As usual, the village is very quiet.   There are a few cars parked, but no people in sight.   They could all be peeping out from behind their lace curtains, but it feels more like a ghost village.

A few weeks ago a thief in the night visited and stole a very special motorbike, I say a thief, but it was a group of men.    

Not an animal stirred, no dogs barked, no lace curtain twitched.

They were caught on cctv, although I don't think they have been caught in real life.      They had obviously been watching carefully, for the bike was stored at the back of a locked garage, behind a parked car.   They would have had to use bolt cutters to cut the security chain and then lift the bike over the car to get it out of the garage.    They took less than five minutes to do the whole thing.

The long stretches of hedge always make me wish that Tim Bushe lived around here.   He could have some fun with them.    Tim Bushe is responsible for cutting some rather lovely shapes out of hedges.   If you haven't seen his work ...

found on google, Daily Mail, I believe.

I love this one of the elephants.

found on google

Or how about cats?    Those long hedges would give him plenty of scope - and there are lots more of them in the village.       I wonder whether I could pop along, in the middle of the night and do some cutting and sculpting...

Beautiful blue sky over the old Methodist Chapel, now a residence.   
Lots of people have ripped up their old hedges, then they complain at how they have lost their privacy.   They erect ugly six foot high wooden fences.   Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Oh, well.   Life moves on.    The village changes.   People come, people go.    Houses get renovated, or built, others come in and change them about.   The same with gardens.   It is how it is.

What is a mystery to me, is that I rarely see anyone about in the village and yet changes happen.   It must be those elves working a night shift.

I have a busy day ahead of me.   I am hosting a double birthday party tomorrow.     The title says it all.    I am not a party animal, but they will have fun.