Читать книгу The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries - Tom Cutler, Tom Cutler - Страница 24

The mystery

Everybody who is old enough to remember the event recalls where he or she was when President Kennedy was shot, or when the World Trade Center was attacked. For those who witnessed its aftermath, the Great Storm of 1987 is another of those memorable events.

During the night of 15 October violent hurricane-force winds tore roofs off houses in London, demolished the seven oaks in Sevenoaks, and blew beach huts half a mile across the sea road in Hove. Roads and railways blocked by downed trees kept commuters at home, and fallen electricity lines left many without power. London, East Anglia and the Home Counties were particularly badly hit, being buffeted by winds the like of which will probably not be felt again for another 200 years. Gorleston in Norfolk chalked up a gust of 122 mph.

I remember this all as if it was yesterday. I was living in Muswell Hill, in North London. As I walked through the woods to the Tube station the next morning – I was meant to travel to Sussex – I had to step over branches and jump over whole trees. No trains were moving so I postponed my visit until the following week. When Monday arrived I set off on my journey.

I enjoy the countryside so I decided that I would walk the few miles from Brookbridge station to the home of my great friend Arthur Van Houghton, the famous opera tenor and popular siffleur, who I was going to see. I had never been to the area before but he’d told me it was a pleasant stroll from the station to Rotherborough High Street, where we were to meet.

This was in the days long before smartphones and digital maps, and Arthur had told me to get out at the station and walk past the Wheatsheaf pub and then along the bridleway that travels straight as an arrow through the pretty fields and woods towards Martinsbrook. I was to go as far as the fingerpost at the crossroads in the little village of Brookstead Heath. The signpost, he said, would point me in the direction of Rotherborough, once the hometown of the celebrated aviatrix Betty la Roche. Arthur was to meet me at the top of the high street, under the bronze sculpture of the famous airwoman.

The train journey was uneventful and I got out at the station, and set off as instructed. There were many indications of hurricane damage in the dappled autumn sunshine, but much of the fallen wood and bits of demolished fence had been tidied into piles.

It was indeed a lovely walk and I finally reached the crossroads where the signpost was. And that’s where the trouble started.

The sign was a charming black and white fingerpost of the old style, with four ‘fingers’ pointing from its central pillar. The problem was that the hurricane had blown the sign down and it was lying flat on the grass. I looked at it lying there uselessly for a moment, wondering what to do.

One of the signpost’s fingers pointed to Martinsbrook and Coppesfield, a second, at right angles to that one and stuck in the mud, pointed to High Woodhurst and Rotherborough (my destination), a third, pointing in the opposite direction to the one to Coppesfield, pointed to Brookbridge, and a fourth, opposite the Rotherborough one, pointed to Buxfield Cross, a place I’d never heard of.

And then a thought struck me. I realised that I could easily discover which way I needed to go by using the sign, even as it lay there on the ground.

The problem

How did I discover from the blown-down signpost the proper direction to take in order to reach my destination?

Tap here for the solution.