"Don't move, you're surrounded...

...by armed bastards!"

(For full effect the heavy emphasis must be delivered on the final word. Trust me it works best that way.)

H and I have both yearned for opportunities - rare you will rightly imagine in the Wolds - to employ this magisterially menacing command ever since we heard it first uttered in righteous anger by 'our hero' Philip Glenister, who - if you know not and you should - plays the part of hard-nosed, hard-headed, hard-everything DCI Gene Hunt in our favourite television programme 'Life on Mars.' (If Glenister/Hunt ever finds the acting life too slow for him/them then an alternative in politics would be a shoe-in. The public adore the man and the persona. Prime Minister by acclaim.)

And funnily enough just such an opportunity occurred at - or more strictly in the back garden of - the Rectory last night would you believe!

It was our lurcher - S - who first alerted us to the possibility of an intruder, by leaping to his feet during the late news and launching himself at the window of the back parlour in a frenzy of uncontrolled barking. Now this does need to be set in context. The lurcher will go through such a performance any time a fox is passing through the garden. Or even when a fox isn't; the lurcher thinking one might be or perhaps just should be.

So at first-phase frenzy we took little notice, remaining semi-glued to the latest bad news from everywhere, as one does. As, though, the lurcher maintained his horrid howling for some uninterrupted minutes, finally H turned to me remarking, as if not totally interested in the matter, "I wonder if there's someone out there."

This of course being understood domestic code for "On your feet dear PP. Do the manly thing and imperil yourself by investigating the cause of the disturbance, whilst I remain safely seated indoors with my cocoa."

Rising at once to this unstated yet clear instruction, torch was retrieved from under the stairs and, with robust walking-stick grasped in the striking hand, I ventured forth into the darkness.

Calling out as one never quite intends to for its very banality yet ever irresistability "Is anyone there?" I was totally astonished to hear the apologetic response from the shrubbery at the end of the garden "Well yes actually there is." Now this answer - more peculiar than the very question that prompted it - rather floored (or should that be 'lawned' as I was standing at the time on the grass) me.

What kind of fell intruder actually owns to his presence when asked to do so I had to wonder? Presumably not one of the fiercest, though perhaps the most brazen, was all I could reflect on for the moment.

Having though begun the dialogue with the unknown stranger this way, I was more or less compelled to continue in like vein. Being about, therefore, to invite the honest invader of our garden to show himself, I was abruptly forestalled by the lurcher who had slipped out the backdoor unnoticed clearly keen to lend a hand - or paw - to the whole situation.

Now the lurcher is a simple soul. He hunts by instinct and breeding, and he is also beautifully protective of the entire family by habit; that latter I put down to a kind of angelic animal gratitude for having been rescued from a life of misery. (Which he was, but that is another story for another occasion.)

Instinct, breeding and habit melding into one pure force, the lurcher no sooner caught the stranger's weak words - yet being utterly oblivious to the non-threatening tone of the voice - than immediately set off full-pelt across the lawn, eyes blazing with righteous fury, barking the while most furiously in purest canine-speak "Don't move, you're surrounded by armed bastards." (The very words indeed I swear I heard in his voice.)

Well, whether our intruder had been watching the same television as ourselves, or else perhaps - less likely on the whole - was fluent in 'received lurcher', the effect of the impending onslaught was to propel the fellow - for such he was - out of darkness of the shrubbery and into the relative sanctuary of my torchlight.

"Good Lord," I exclaimed on instantly recognising him. "It's Young Tim! What on earth are you doing skulking in my shrubbery at this or indeed at any hour?"

Young Tim you must understand - son of Old Tim naturally - was not much known to me, he having departed for N as soon as his adolescent legs could carry him the distance. Not for him the quiet of village life, but what passes for the high-life of N. (Not that high I am informed.) I had heard rumour that he had joined the local Gazette as what I was brought up to call a 'cub' reporter - which turned out to be the fact - though what is undoubtedly now known as 'Deputy Assistant Under-Manager of Resources' or some such grandiose and empty title.

Even so as newshound in the making, what on earth was he doing in my shrubs in the dark I most urgently needed to know. The obvious and most alarming supposition that he had turned from innocent youth into maturing voyeur mercifully proved not to be the case. (Glad of that or else, with E about the place, would have been forced to have left him to the mercy of - or lack of - my canine Armed Bastard.)

The gabbled truth of the matter did leave me in hoots. Apparently the production company behind the new series of 'The Apprentice' - being ever vigilant to protect their wares - had picked up on Bro. George's spoof notion that a certain Beatrice Bowhandle [see previous] would be entering the show at some later point in broadcast and were determined to find out what, if anything, lay at the bottom of this jest. Passing on the gen to the Gazette and requesting investigation on the ground, poor Young Tim had been delegated the task of padding out to the Palladas residence in order to sniff out any facts in the case.

Not being entirely - or even remotely - versed in the matters of how to conduct undercover work of this kind, Tim could think of nothing else to do other than to lurk in the shrubbery in the deluded hope of picking up some inside info of use to his leonine masters back at HQ hovering over hot presses waiting for his exclusive story.

He did mention that he had considered a frontal attack: knocking on our door demanding to know what we knew and when did we know it - standard unsubtle but often effective hack practice; but that he had spotted H about the place and his courage had failed him. This last had such a ring of pure truth about it I had to believe the whole story, I can tell you! H can put the frighteners on people from a hundred paces, even when she is thinking of nothing more aggressive than wondering if Cook had remembered to order the fish for dinner.

The lurcher the meanwhile spotting most sharply that Tim and I were now engaged in most harmonious if still puzzled conversation, returned to join us and to greet Tim with a most fond look as if at a long-lost and now vouchsafed-returned cousin.

Tim, though, having noted the original 'armed bastards' motif behind the barking and the charging could not easily be persuaded that the beast was safe. (Though it were a chill night I could catch the sweat pouring in some residual fright from his fevered, fearful brow.) Seemed nothing less I could do than to invite him to join us inside for some late cocoa and a fuller chat about all the circs.

That offer, though gently intended to put him at his ease, clearly did not quite hit the emotional mark. One could see in his face the difficult urgings of his restless mind seeking to weigh the relative risks of remaining close to the Scylla of the lurcher or else confronting the Charybdis of H.

We would perhaps have made it inside the house - I could sense him leaning towards this option as acceptably safe - were it not for the unfortunate fact of H's choosing at that point to jump into the lit doorway of the kitchen seeming to be carrying something very like a sawn-off shotgun and shouting our very own catchphrase at full volume. At this poor Tim simply legged it raving into the night.

H later explained - due malt having passed both our lips Lent or no Lent - that becoming concerned by the lurcher's sudden silence she had decided that resting at ease with her cocoa was no longer the 'right stuff'. Clutching, therefore, a to-hand umbrella [the seeming shotgun] she had determined to race outside to face the foe and rescue the day - or night - and the Rector plus lurcher. (Probably more 'lurcher plus Rector', but best not to dwell.)

She simply swore - and I do believe her as I must ever for the sake of domestic peace - that she had had not the slightest intention prior to the point of delivery of adding to the power of her dramatic intervention by bellowing the fiercesome "Don't move...etc.,...armed bastards" number, but being so overtaken by the wonderful power of the words somehow they had just slipped out in the heat of the moment - or indeed of the night.

I am not, though, entirely convinced of this explanation. I have indeed heard her practising the very line in the back bedroom when she thought I was out of the house. Been saving herself, I reckon, for the first chance to use it. (An unduly unruly meeting of the Parish Council being prime suspect here. "Point of order Madam Chairman. 'Don't Move...etc., etc.'" One can picture it now!)

Doubt our neighbours would have heard it all which is a blessing, though Young Tim is no doubt, this very moment, scribing the most absolutely right headline for his piece:

Menace at Rectory. Reporter's life threatened. Police informed. Talkback planning a series on spree-killing Rectors' wives. Sir Alan Sugar possible narrator. Ralph Fiennes to play part of Rector. Nic Kidman probable wife lead. Phil Glenister to co-star.

Call 'y-double y-z-double z' to leave your thoughts and views. E-mail the editor in confidence if you've ever had an armed bastard in your family.