17. "And what was going on in their minds?!!..."

It's the season of woodpeckers, wild rose blooming in the hedgerows, bluebells, and car thefts.

If you were coming along the road into Wormington from Dumbleton last night or before lunchtime today (today being April 15, 2025), or going the other way, you will have seen a bunch of paper blowing over and up the road, from the field entrance where the mammoth pieces of burned tree trunk are. Before those astonishing monsters went in it was a popular lay-by, a place to park, burn the odd car (see here), fly-tip and litter. 

So, encouraged by our neighbour, who'd also seen the paper ("What kind of people would do that?"), we litter-picked the road after lunch. 

A lot of old cigarette ends along the way: people don't really realise the concentrated poisons these little throw-aways send out into the world. And, of course, there were other things, usual things. But when we got up to the logs we were in for a surprise. The papers scattered along the road were the complete service records for a car, going back many years. ln the field entrance were the owner's manual and its almost-empty wallet. We gathered everything up, imagining the poor soul who had left it on their roof and then driven off, put it all back in the wallet, and carried on.

And then farther up the road, almost invisible in the grasses of the verge: another first, and another surprise: A personal wallet, undisturbed.

A local person, and a completed story. Both had been in their car, stolen last night from outside their home, and now returned. Tossed out, presumably on the way out. Not litter, in the usual sense, at all.

Just thieves, and a job to do.