EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN
Like a small child,
Benny’s tongue protruded through his lips as he cut the amusing article out of The Mail on Sunday, intending to post it
to his old friend in Devon, whom he could picture laughing out loud at the
brilliance of the sarcasm of the journalistic condemnation of carbon
footprints.
The front door slammed as his wife, Monika, returned from the local shops.
‘Benny!’ she called out. ‘Where are you?’
‘In here,’ he replied.
Monika entered the small front room, with its view overlooking the common, and
put her bag down. She seemed flushed with excitement, though her husband was
too busy with his press cuttings to notice.
‘Never guess who I just saw in One-Stop,’ she said.
‘David Cameron, Brad Pitt or Terry Wogan?’ Benny chuckled.
Monika’s face was a mask of confusion. ‘What?’
‘Don’t say “what” say “pardon”.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Benny. I’m being serious. I was standing next to her in the
queue at One-Stop. I wonder what she was doing in Rusthall. Perhaps she’s moved
here. I’m sure it was her. Only I didn’t like to stare.’
Sighing, Benny looked up from his newspapers spread out on the coffee table and
threw his wife his most exasperated expression. ‘Who the bloody-hell are you
talking about?’
‘Her off the telly. One with the funny name. The local weather girl. Very
attractive one. Oh, what’s her name?’
‘Cardy.’
‘That’s the one. She was much taller than I thought she would be.’
‘How would you know how tall she is from the telly?’ Benny pointed to the
enormous flat-screen television that took up almost one half of the room.
‘Nearly everyone’s the same size on a screen.’
Monika frowned as she brushed a stray piece of highly lacquered grey hair back
into place. She hadn’t grasped her husband’s point about the weather girl’s
height and decided it was time to change the subject.
‘You’re not cutting out more articles to send in the post.’
Benny giggled. ‘This one’s highly amusing. Highly. Terry’s going to love this
one.’
‘That’s all you ever do since you’ve retired. Snip bits out of newspapers and
send them to people. It’s costing a fortune in stamps. Can’t you get on your
computer and email them to your friends?’
Benny shook his head and gestured palms upwards. ‘How many times have I got to
say “I DON’T HAVE A SCANNER”?’
‘There’s no need to shout. And it might be cheaper to buy a scanner, than waste
all that money on stamps.’
Dramatically, Benny put head in his hands, and mumbled, ‘God give me strength!’
Then he took his hands away and gave Monika a pitying look. ‘There’s no more
room in the spare bedroom for a scanner. It would have to go onto another table
and - ’ He sighed impatiently. ‘Oh, I’m not going to go through all that
again.’
The wrinkles round Monika’s lips tightened. ‘Well, I just think you need something
to interest you more than these newspaper cuttings.’
Benny smiled suddenly and tapped the side of his nose.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Monika demanded.
‘It means I have something that will revolutionise village life. And it starts
here in Rusthall.’
Monika stared at Benny, waiting for him to elaborate, her face expressionless.
Benny tapped out a little drum roll on the coffee table prior to his
announcement. ‘I,’ he declared with a flourish of hands, ‘am going to get
Rusthall to adopt its own currency.’
‘It’s own what?’
‘Currency. Money. Money that can only be used in Rusthall.’
Monika’s forehead screwed into a simian frown. ‘What’s the point of that?’
‘To keep things local. So if I do odd jobs for someone, they pay me with
Rusthall currency, and then I can buy produce on one of the nearby farms with
our own currency.’
‘But what would this actual money look like?’
‘What does that matter?’
‘Well, it’s not like Bank of England notes. Whatever Rusthall uses as money,
perhaps it could be forged.’
Benny gave a breathy exhalation of irritation. ‘What would be the point of
that?’
Monika shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But it seems to me that if someone was to come
from somewhere like Crowborough, for instance, with forged money, they could
buy local produce and disappear back from where they came.’
Benny suddenly exploded. ‘I’m serious about this, Monika.’
‘Well, yes, but...’ Her voice drifted off into a startled nothing.
‘I haven’t fine-tuned it yet, but I’m going to start be researching it. I’m going
out this afternoon and I’m going to do a survey
- which I will first type on the computer. Today will be my fact-finding
mission. And tomorrow will be Rusthall will have its own currency. And who
knows: the day after that, perhaps every village in the country.’
Monika backed away uncertainly towards the door. ‘Er – I’ll go and put the
kettle on.’
IN EPISODE 168
A frightening event on Tunbridge Wells Common.