A bloggee has asked why we no longer hear from Kevin the Sheriff of Dun's court. Reader fatigue, I fear. Crime in Berwickshire is so drearily predictable _ minor drug offences, drink driving, speeding with or without drink driving, common assault, minor vandalism, more recently incontinent dogs with lazy owners; all lovingly recorded in the
Berwickshire but is one big yawn. Occasionally an odd item attracts attention: 'gunfire over Hutton' or a woman behaving suspiciously as mentioned by the police representative at a community council meeting. The first item might make quite a good title for a locally produced 'B' film and indeed the scriptwriters in the media section of the Hutton Think Tank are working on n outline script at this moment-their embryonic Film production company is in trouble with its proposed nomenclature : 'Twenty First Century Foxhunting, Ltd' and may never clear the first ditch, as it were. Huttonian may however have had some contact with the 'suspicious woman' albeit fleetingly. During a noisy feeding frenzy with the grandchildren just before they left for France the horrible hullabaloo was interrupted at the back door by a caller- a very attractive young blond woman who introduced herself as a Russian Student trying to earn a rouble or two to pay her university fees by selling Russian artifacts. She offered to show me some. Was I interested? I was but thought that probably the wife and the eldest daughter might not be. As I was formulating a tactful response the grandson came to the door and the young woman claiming not to be able to understand his 4.8 year old babble decided to make her way elsewhere.
An hour later, driving en route to Paxton, I overtook the girl as she was heading on foot in that direction. I hesitated about offering her a lift but thought she might not wish to attend the Community Council meeting which was my destination. So I left her behind.A pity as it was at this meeting the visiting copper mentioned sightings of the 'suspicious woman' and her presence in his might have helped his clear up record. I perhaps should have mentioned that the Russian female had only one very small backpack about her person and it did occur to me that there was not much room for many Russian artifacts-not even the teeniest weeniest icons. So if I had shown interest in what she had to offer I wonder how that scenario might have developed in the absence of the icons. Much more interesting than 'Gun Fire over Hutton' I fancy. Thankgoodness for the providential intervention of the grandson.
I think.
