Some puzzles

 

 

“I remember a big rectangular room with no windows.” A man was telling me about his memories of growing up on a farm. Why would a room have no windows? And he remembered another thing – one of the buildings had pictures pinned on the wall that a little boy should not be looking at. “My friends were queueing up to have a look,” he confided. I was at a Craft Fair selling my books and telling (again) of how I was born on the day the war ended. He was born a few years later but had these strange memories of a room with no views and pin-up pictures on a wall. What had been going on?

He told me that it was only years later that he realised that his father was farming on land with buildings that had previously been used by soldiers and that the room with no windows had lines on the floor and had been a squash court. The puzzle had been solved.

I found myself unravelling a puzzle this week and I nearly came to the wrong conclusion. I had an email from a person I had not heard from for many years asking me to get in touch. I used to give talks for her organisation and I imagined she was asking again, so I sent a cheery reply. I was surprised by her next email.

“Sorry to bother you…I have been trying to get a gift card for a friend’s daughter who is down with liver cancer and it’s her birthday today…” Needless to say, it went on to ask for money and of course they would pay me back. I do not have a phone number for this person, so I rang a mutual friend who after enquiries was able to confirm that it was a scam. How easily it would have been to send money to a ‘trusted person’ who was down on her luck. But this was a cheating stranger and someone else would have benefited and left me in the lurch after playing on my sympathy.

I was surprised by anther email this week (two in a few days) saying that there was a problem with my courier and that although delivery of my parcel had been attempted it had not been successful and that they would try again. I wonder how hard they had to try. I was in the house when the email came. Was this another scam? I did not reply and my parcel came safely the next day.

It is that time of year to put the bird table up. There were no problems here as we welcomed the same trusted birds again.

(taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)