So you get the general picture. I live in a quiet little picturesque street where excitement is mainly confined to our very own version of car cricket: we score a six every time a courier van turns up at the house down the end where my neighbour also works from home running a business.
But just a week or so ago, when I was happily toting up my score, a police car arrived to investigate a mystery.
It seems the one vacant house in our little cul-de-sac, which also happened to be on sale, had been targeted by er, secret landscapers.
Basically, the goss that filtered down to our end of the street indicated that on a check round the property for the absent owner, one of the neighbours had come across several patches of freshly dug topsoil. Said topsoil had been carefully stacked to one side, indicating the diggers may have been disturbed and made off in a hurry.
Anxious not to contaminate a possible crime scene or stumble into further strange deeds the neighbour contacted law enforcement officers who were quickly on the scene but came away equally confused.
Obviously, news travels fast around our little enclave and there were various suggestions as to what had gone on.
Somebody had buried something or maybe dug something up, the topsoil was being sold on the black market, clandestine soil testing for a new HQ for a secret government agency, some old ritual from centuries ago ...
I hope it's the latter and it involves sacrificing birds. Especially the ones that poop on my car.
Anyway, nobody had a clue what it was and gradually the mystery digging got filed away in the back of everyone's mind.
Until the other day.
I happened to be at the window when I noticed an odd procession coming down the cul-de-sac. There was a child pointing the way and running helpfully ahead, followed by a woman in an enormous sunhat and, bringing up the rear, a wiry old gent carrying a shovel.
One does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out this trio and the previous incident were somehow linked. The pieces fitted together even better when they disappeared down the driveway of the vacant house.
I'm a big fan of Neighbourhood Watch. I like to think if I was away and something like that happened to my place I'd like my neighbours to ring up the cops. So I did.
It turns out a couple of other neighbours were on the job, too, and while I was dealing with the police, they had used their initiative and rung up the real estate agent who was selling the place. He had raced round quicker than you could say "lost commission" and confronted the diggers in the act.
Turns out it was all a bit of a misunderstanding as to what you could and couldn't do before a sale goes through. And repairs have been made and everything is back to normal. Presumably until the deal is done and the digging starts again.
So everything is back to routine in our little piece of paradise and we are all safe in the knowledge if there's anything untoward going on our neighbours will be calling in the investigators straight away to sort it all out.
I wonder if they could do something about the birds pooing on my car.
