De-plugged...

...a most peculiar development: George's microwave has returned though minus its plug, which appears to have been rudely severed. Patrick, however, has not been seen plugged or de-plugged. Geo. phoned at dawn to say he'd been taking the morning air behind the pub, after yet another sleepless night of worry, when he spotted the microwave on the patio not far from the chimenea - which he'd installed last summer in a somewhat fruitless attempt to smarten up the back garden. (He and Patrick have both visions of more a lofty clientele than our village could ever truly serve up. The chimenea, needless to say, met with a certain local ridicule and is already known to all as the 'Dragon's Dildo'.)

Anyway, theories now abound as to what this might mean. M&M - Mildred and Maurice of course - are both minded that this is a message from 'the kidnappers': pay a handsome ransom or Patrick's plug too will be pulled as it were. Leaving aside the ambiguity of the symbolic import of the missing plug there is of course nothing to suggest that Patrick has indeed been kidnapped, it not being one of our local customs or traditions. Centuries back we, in common with all surrounding villages, suffered the occasional loss of menfolk to the press-gangers operating out of the Norfolk naval dockyards, but even that was not true kidnapping in the 'return to sender once payment has been made' sense.

M&M were able to make use of their extensive and highly personal knowledge of local feuds and feuding to ponder whether Patrick might have been caught up in some dark clan warfare, but though a number of possible options were considered all were deemed improbable cause, as Patrick is one of the few true in-comers with no local family ties, having drifted somehow over from Dublin as a youth.

Geo. himself is not of the kidnapping theory persuasion, though I had a sense from him this morning that there was in this for him a clue about what is going on here. Something in his face told me he is more to the wise than he is letting on - we keen-eyed pastors are taught to spot such signs of the human heart in the outward presence.

My thoughts passed on at home over the luncheon table, I could swear I detected a glint or gleam in E's eyes, as if she too had some inside line on this whole situation. Not of course that an interrogation on the subject was in any way fruitful, E merely remarking as ever that her father was being 'totally gay' - an apposite if inaccurate remark to make in the circumstances I could only riposte.

A swift walk this afternoon to digest lunch - one of cook's heavier offerings I fear - and the meaning of this morning's events.