Derailments

On Tuesday, a bright, sunny morning here in Swanvale Halt, I set off to go down to the church for Morning Prayer as usual. In the driveway of one of the houses on the flat part of the hill I saw a cat. Now I do not have a cat, although there are a number of felines who prowl around the Rectory as it is a substantial island of No-Cat's-Land surrounded by lots of catted households; I don't even like cats, as I don't especially warm to any animals (though I have a soft spot for snails). I certainly don't know much about their normal behaviour.

However this cat, which at first appeared to be sunning itself on the driveway, was clearly not being normal. Firstly cats don't tend to lie around in the early morning; secondly its eyes were half-open yet it showed no sign of interest as I passed. Closer examination revealed it to be shaking and trembling. Having got down to church and rattled through the Office I then consulted the vet along the road and came to retrieve the cat. It had a microchip and turned out to be owned by a family I know who live just round the corner from where I found it; it had been knocked down and was too badly injured to survive, unfortunately, though no damage was evident externally. I still remain surprised that with all the people who must have passed by the spot over the hour or more the cat (Basil, apparently) must have been there, nobody did anything about it. Are people simply very unobservant, or observe but without any curiosity about what they see?

There was due to be a funeral on Wednesday and a guest organist, a local music teacher, was playing for the service. She'd never played our organ before and wanted a practice, so she came to the church as I arrived for Evening Prayer. There are two keys that open up the organ case and the door into it. Somehow while removing one I hooked the smaller one which fell off and promptly vanished. We both agreed that the plonk it made didn't sound as though it had made contact with the floor, and speculated that it might have fallen into the choir robes and got caught up in a hem or pocket. We spent twenty-five minutes checking every robe, scouring the floor, moving everything on it,. and emptying bags and boxes. Twenty-five minutes. Eventually we found the key, not on the floor, not in someone's robe, but lying on the beam above the hook. Somehow it had been flicked by the bigger key in such a way that it had fallen upwards. You couldn't replicate that if you tried a hundred times. Demons are probably the answer.