The Curmudgeon

Getting up in the early hours to make one of his regular calls to his textile suppliers in the Far East, Jetset wandered into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee - and crunched into the broken glass with his bare feet.

Hopping round and cursing, he did not pay much attention at first to what he thought was a shadowy figure flashing past the kitchen window. Then he saw the panes of glass missing from his back door ...

He heard a crash and, still barefoot, ran out into the back garden where he promptly went head over heels over a large metal object lying on his sodden lawn.

Cursing even more, and trying to wipe the mud out of his eyes - which was difficult, as there was more mud on his hands than on his face - he saw that the metal object concerned was his expensive micro-wave oven with built-in grill and more dials than the average space shuttle.

He ran round his converted barn to see if he could spot any vehicles in the neighbourhood. But no - the Dale was as still and quiet as the grave.

So with throbbing feet and mud-caked dressing gown, he went back into the house and phoned the police. They would send someone round tomorrow, they said.

Now there might have been people in Beggarsdale who, once upon a time, would have laughed at the thought of our globetrotting entrepreneur going head over heels onto his muddy lawn. But not now...

For an hour later, the burglar alarm at the post office burst into song and within minutes The Lane was full of locals in various stages of night attire. And Mean Mike, husband of Cousin Kate the postmistress, who had installed his very expensive alarm system with heavy heart, discovered jemmy marks on a side window frame.

The same policeman took the call and said something like, "Oh another one - we'll try and get someone there but it will take a while" (Mike was too wound up to take in the exact words).

As an agitated throng began to build up outside the post office, another figure came running down The Lane from the Old Vicarage: Maggots Money-Grubber in a yellow silk Paisley dressing gown which, even in the gloom, threatened to strike his audience blind.

"We've been done," shouted Maggots from 50 yards away. "They've got me telly and video ..."

The Innkeeper thought it would be a good idea to open the Beggars' for coffee and bacon butties (with a few illegal brandies thrown in for emergency therapy) and we waited for the police.

They came just before 5 am, a uniformed sergeant and a plain-clothes detective, and when things finally settled down, the detective asked what, we realised later, was a very important question: "Did anyone see a strange vehicle in the village - and did they get its number?"

But no-one had, which is unusual for all the roads out of the village go steeply up hill and can be seen for a couple of miles in every direction. And that set us pondering:

If our would-be thieves did not come by car or van, do we have a criminal - or criminals - in our midst? This has all the indications of a saga that will run and run.