An old windmill above the Buckinghamshire’s
village of Turville, suddenly crashed into motion,
nearly causing me to crash my balloon.
Remembering that Major (retired) Clayman-Catchpole,
whom I’d met at that quaint pub,
The Billycock and Barge Pole,
had claimed the mill was home to a musket-toting spirit,
I wondered, ‘Did the wind cause those rotating vanes to swing,
or something more sinister?’
‘No,’ I reassured myself, ‘he was just an old bore!’
I can still remember that boozy night, when film director Don Spiegel
denied he was the notorious wanted man who’d fled Hollywood,
pursued by our companion, FBI detective Belinda Bandy-Wood.
What were these two doing in an English village, you may wonder.
Well, I shall tell you a strange story.
I used to be a right nerd, a boring financial analyst,
who surprised my colleagues by boasting I’d fly round the world
powered by hot-aired transport – until I stole the company’s money,
enrolling on a sailing ship crewed by young women
who’d run off from a Swiss finishing school.
We headed west, stopping to pick up my balloon.
The loudest of these rebellious females,
enjoying the company of ‘Bouncy’ Beatrice,
as we explored every foreign port.
Alas, after I’d tried it on with ‘Shy’ Suzie, Beatrice threw me out of her hammock.
So, penning a screenplay based on my adventures, I flew over Hollywood,
shouting ‘I have a great script!’
About to be downed by police helicopters,
I was rescued by director Don Spiegel.
Curious about my black eye, he laughed when hearing how,
over a romantic dinner, a feisty female had hit me with a piece of haddock.
I was compelled to tell my story, at which he cried, ‘So you’re a thief!
Can you give me a ride in your flying craft?’
A host of creditors were after him, so we flew away, hitting the Irish coast.
But Don was lambasted for his film, The Larricking Leprechaun,
riddled with names like ‘Hooligan’ O’Houllily and Pat Picklefeck.
We took to the air, a strong wind taking us to the English county of Buckinghamshire.
Meanwhile the FBI had dispatched the aforementioned detective Wendy,
to bring back Mr Spiegel.
By judicous use of contacts in Interpol, she discovered that the
English village of Turville was the place to find a dishonest film maker.
Swimming in the River Thames, she was observed by
bird watcher Bert Battlethwaite, who was mercilessly lambasted by
Major (retired) Clayman-Catchpole, in his best barrack-room manner.
Sensing a shy spirit, she sipped a pint of home-brewed ale, Golden Flames,
as the military man told her of the 17th-century highwayman, ‘Musket’ Monaghan,
who would hide out in that very inn, with barmaid ‘Marvellous’ Madge.
Revered as a giant who terrified lawmen, she revealed in a book,
Highwaymen I’ve Known, that the thief was tiny.
‘It was a good job,’ she wrote, ‘for we could hardly fit in my sleeping space!
‘So, I wasn’t lying when assuring my mother I was still chaste.
Until I wed Ned, our village poacher, but he stank of salmon,
nicked from Lord Dovecot’s private pond.
‘I would escape to the windmill to meet ‘Musket’, but he would insist on
inviting his outlaw band.
‘So I told the sheriff where to find him.
‘But an admirer smuggled in a shovel, and he emerged outside
Newgate jail from a well-hidden tunnel.’
Mandy said she needed to conduct aerial surveillance, so we set off in my balloon.
Intrigued by the sight of female Morris dancers on Mickleback Common,
she cried, ‘Let’s dance.’
I discovered these leaping females were my old pals, the escapees from a
Swiss finishing school.
But Mandy laughed as the major appeared with a shame-faced Bert,
whom he’d caught in the bushes with binoculars.
A fellow twitcher, ‘Shy’ Susan, sensing a kindred spirit,
persuaded him to settle on her wealthy father’s estate,
where they could observe chaffinches and sparrows,
away from curvaceous US thief catchers.
After dancing to the song, ‘Lover’s Blushes’,
which country folk believed would dispatch Cupidious arrows,
Mandy took me by the arm, declaring, ‘I’ve thrown away my badge!’
Don cried ‘Great, so let’s go.
‘I’ve a great idea for a film, complete with a highwayman and her lover,
Marvellous Madge!’
Away we went, but nobody knew where we’d flown.
Meanwhile, in The Billycock and Barge Pole,
people still talk of dodgy Don, that fugitive from Hollywood,
the river-dipping FBI officer, Belinda Wendy-Wood – and me,
her nerdy lover, who nearly demolished the Turville windmill in his balloon.
