The blue chair

We were driving to Cardiff on Saturday and just past Merthyr Tydfil I noticed a child’s blue garden chair, identical to the one in Betty’s playhouse, on the side of the dual carriageway. I thought to myself ‘That looks just like Betty’s chair, I am sure the robbers stole it last night, then once they were nearly home they discarded it on the roadside’. I was starting to scare myself. I looked at the time and took in the exact location, so that I could give the police accurate facts, if, when I got home, Betty’s chair was missing from inside her playhouse. Meanwhile, Tom was blissfully unaware of my train of thought. He is so silly sometimes, doesn’t notice a bloody thing.

There has been a professional gang of robbers from South Wales homing in on our area, more specifically our stretch of road which is about 100 yards long. Since living in rural countryside, I have been scared at night anyway, and now I know that they have been prowling around at 4am looking for trailors, landrovers and other expensive metal stuff, I have been absolutely terrified. They have been in our garden because they left the gate swinging open. Every morning at 4am (weirdly I happen to wake at that time) I turn the light on as a warning to them that I am at large in my house and they had better get lost. I should mention that Tom and I do not own any large metal objects (apart from our car) and so we are probably not a target.

We had a lovely day out in Cardiff and thankfully this time there was no helter skelter humiliation, but all the while I kept thinking about the whole blue chair riddle. Why did the robbers steal Betty’s blue chair?

When we got home, the girls were tired and hungry, but the very first thing I had to do was go and check if the chair was where it should be, in her playhouse.