New people!!!

There’s a house just beside the church that’s been for sale for ages. We drove past on Friday morning and a ‘Sold’ sign was up!!!

What’s more, the current owner was loading stuff into a van. Then, on our return, two new vans and two cars had arrived.

“New people!!!” I exclaimed to the LTLP. “We need to find out what they’re like.”

She sighed.

We had to go to the Village Shop. “I know,” I said, “now it’s stopped raining, we’ll go via the church and make a walk of it.”

“You are,” she explained, “the nosiest person I have ever met in my life.”

I was stung by this unfair criticism, and we walked in silence. One white male, one white female, possibly late thirties, reasonably well dressed. He was having a fraught conversation into a mobile phone.

We collected the paper, and it was such a nice afternoon that I decided we should go back via the same route. I noted the geographical origin of their removal vans. This time they were having an animated discussion with the existing householder.

We’d been home ten minutes when the doorbell rang.

“It’s the new people!!!” I shouted, excitedly. The LTLP threw open the door. It was Short Tony. Booooo. It was only passe existing old people after all.

“You said you wanted to make a trip to the dump,” he offered. “And I heard there were some new people.”

We loaded up his Land Rover and drove the quickest way to the dump, which is past the church. The man was pacing up and down in some agitation.

“One of them’s a sports car,” Short Tony opined. “That means around forty, mid-life crisis sort of thing.”

“They could be local,” I replied, “but it’s more likely they’ve used local removal men because they’re cheaper than getting people from West London.”

“Yes. And making a new start with his second wife, since they sold up their bookshop business and their daughter went off to University in the North of England.”

We left our load, and came back the direct route, past the church.

The vans had disappeared and the new people had gone!!!

We were aghast.

They would have been so happy here.