Gone missing
Roy Hattersley Tast week — defying the traffic jams , and the most restrictive parking regulations in western Europe — I ventured into Bakewell, our local metropolis and the home of the pudding which must never be called a tart. While stationary behind the wheel in the one-way system, I read a notice in a butcher's window which promised, Award-winning sausage will be here next week'. I had plenty of time to speculate about the forthcoming event. Would the sausage cut a ribbon to mark the opening of the shop's extension and then make a speech which expressed thanks to the pig and the farmer to whom it owed its success? My faith in porcine nature made me hope that it would donate its fee to animal welfare. By the time that I was able to edge forward towards home, I was so impressed by the discovery of the celebrity sausage that I decided to take shop-window notices more seriously in the future. So I stopped outside our village store to examine the advertisements which obscure the merchandise it has on offer.
Some of them were exactly what you would expect — dull and predictable enough to be pinned up behind the bar of The Bull in Ambridge — brass band concerts, amateur dramatics, car-boot sales, gardeners wanting work and parents wanting babysitters. But others were clearly the result of domestic dramas about which it was only possible to speculate. The offer of a 'Three-Seater Settee: Beige' seemed unexceptional until I read the note at the bottom of the handwritten announcement, 'Available in January'. Do the provident people of this practical village even plan the sale of their secondhand furniture six months in advance? Or is the owner sending a message to persons unknown that his or her domestic circumstances are going to change at Christmas? The romantic in me wants to believe that it is not only the settee that will be available in the New Year.
Usually, requests for information about lost animals cause me only anguish. But I felt proud to live in the same village as the man or woman whose honesty transcended their desperation for a reunion. 'Black cat, a tiny bit of white under chin. Not the friendliest of animals'. The unfortunate beast 'walks with a limp' And since the 'wanted' notice had faded with time, we must assume that its luck has not changed — unless, that is, it has chosen to leave the village. But that, I first thought, would require its fearlessly frank owner to explain that it was crazy as well as crippled.
Then I considered the possibility that it had lived next door to the family who advertised 'Yamaha Keyboard, with portable stand. Nearly New'. Did they keep it long enough for the young popmusician in the house to make life intolerable nearby. The advertisement for the lost cat ended 'please point us in its direction'. Perhaps the bereft owners should have added 'and tell him that the keyboard is for sale'.
There was only one advertisement that caused me alarm. It was a professionally produced leaflet which offered lessons in tae kwon do: 'exercise with a difference' — though different from what was not revealed. It was not the picture of the aggressive-looking bald man in pyjamas which caused me concern, but the injunction to 13-cool'. This is exactly the sort of advice that I fled London to avoid. Fortunately, the adjacent photograph of the opposition chief whip — who is the Member of Parliament for this constituency — provided comforting reassurance that this part of the world remains indomitably unfashionable.
At first, I thought that the saddest words on display in the window were 'Mountain Bike. Brand New. Still in Box. Rock-Shock TT Suspension'. I imagined a disappointed father whose ambitions to make a man out of his son were frustrated when the boy admitted that he would rather play the violin than pedal across rough country. But most pathos was provided by a notice that offered a 'Reproduction Mahogany Sideboard. 3 Drawers. Locking Cupboards. Glass Surface Protection'. It seemed a snip at £160 until I noticed that the advertisement had been so often amended by what, in the days of typewriters, was called 'correcting fluid' that the price looked as if it had been embossed on the paper. A cat that was missed and a sideboard that nobody wanted. This village embraces the full span of human emotions.
Roy Hattersley, 2007
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