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Home The entry point for Old Time Tim's website |
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Fiddle Music Collection of dance tunes composed by me and me mates |
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Songs and Monologues what I wrote |
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Strung Up Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire's newest Dance Band!! |
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The Hoofers A feature on the Haddenham Hoofers |
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Tappalachian The new Hertfordshire based Appalachian Dance Team |
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Tall Tales Stories collected over the years |
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The Knoll Historic connections of my home |
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Knowledge Management My personal views on this contentious subject |
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Links Connect to friends, aquaintances, and other places of interest. |
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Site History A log of changes to this site |
This is the first of the three.....
The Tangible Smell
Our host's story was perhaps the most remarkable, especially as his demeanor and character matched exactly his background and occupation, being a Yorkshireman and a Councillor. It was clear at the time that this was not a man who gave in to emotion, nor would he lie or even elaborate any events that he was tasked to recount, which led me to believe that this tale could only be true - I will retell it - as clearly as I can remember - as he told it....
"The house we lived in before this one was newly built in a small housing estate which had been constructed on some waste ground in the village. You do expect some minor teething problems with a new house, but it wasn't long after we had moved in that we began to notice this awful smell. The smell would appear for a short time, mostly after dark, then fade away again. Our initial assumption was that it was a problem with the sewerage or drainage, either beneath the house itself, or in the estate in general, so we called in the builders to investigate and fix the problem under the warranty that we had. Investigations were made, and assurances given, that there was no fault with the drains, but ocurrences of the smell continued unabated. We were beginning to be irritated by it, and by our inability to get the problem resolved. Every time the smell appeared we would follow our noses about the house, trying to track down its source, and gradually focussed to a possible origin - firstly that it was coming from the first floor, and eventually that it was coming from our son's room, often when he was in bed asleep - when we opened the door into the room the smell would rapidly dissipate, so we just could not track down the cause." Here I should point out that the child in question was a nice little boy, around four years old at the time these events took place. His parents made it clear that the mysterious smell was not something they ever discussed in front of the boy - they didn't want him to be disturbed by their concerns. "Having tracked down the smell to the boys room we could get no closer to discovering the source, largely becuse it seemed to fade away as quickly as it appeared, so it was clear a more focussed approach to getting to the bottom of the problem - which I still believed to be something to do with the drains or construction of the building, I decided that, until the problem was nailed, I would sleep in our sons bed, while he in turn slept with my wife in my bed. The first night, having settled down to sleep, without any sign of the smell appearing I was woken by something that was moving on top of the covers. I felt that some creature was slowly walking up my body from the foot of the bed towards my head. I have never been as terified as I found myself then". At this point the listeners interjected again - wanting to know whether the family had any pets - and were assured that they had none, nor were any neigbours pets in the habit of coming into the house. "So- what was it? what did you do?" the listeners urged. " I lay still until the creature reached my chest, then is something of a state of panic, grabbed it firmly, leapt to the window, opened it and threw the creature out." "But what was it?" was asked again - "Surely you must have seen what it was?" " I'm sorry, but no - I was so anxious to rid myself of this fear I didn't stop to think about what the creature might be. But what we do know is that we found no traces outside the next day, and from that moment the horrible smell that we had encountered so often never re-appeared in that house. My only conclusion could be that whatever I had ejected on that night was somehow connected to the smell, and my action had ensured that neither would return." Our storyteller stopped here, and would not be drawn into any speculatiion as to what he had encountered in the night. He made it clear that he had recounted the facts as they appeared to him, and that might have been and end to it all. At this point, my view - and I am sure that of the other listeners, was that somehow a cat had strayed into the house unnoticed, and had hidden under the bed until he had settled down, and had then risked one of its nine lives by climbing on top of the sleeping occupant - and I might have gone on thinking that, had not his wife then taken up the tale...... "We thought that was the end of it, and were mightily relieved, and really tought no more of it until shortly after we moved to our new home here some two years later. I was doing some work in the kithcen and our son, now six had come in and started to chat to me - as he often did. " I'm glad we moved here Mummy" he said "Why is that dear?" I asked, not taking much notice. "I didn't like my room in the other house" " Why-ever not? - it was a nice room" " Yes, but every night the doors would open and animals came out" .....................................
All of these stories are copyright. I have no objections to them being recounted in amateur or semi-professional performances. Let me know if you do.
Anyone seeking to recount these stories in a professional capacity,
record or broadcast them, or reproduce them in any form other than orally, should ask permission from me first.