The curiosities desk keeps a file of dispatches. They are the sort of report that appears at the foot of a page, between the weather and the planning notices, and is read aloud at breakfast. Nobody is harmed in them, as a rule. Something has simply gone slightly and irreversibly sideways, and a local official has been obliged to comment.
A word about provenance. The places named below appear on no map the desk has been able to obtain, and the newspapers credited have no offices we could visit. Readers should treat the file as they would a cabinet of preserved specimens: labeled with care, displayed in good faith, and not to be mistaken for the living animal. What the desk will vouch for is the type. Every one of these is the kind of thing that happens.
New dispatches are added at the top.
Low Kessel / The Kessel Advertiser
Town votes to keep clock that runs backward
The clock on the Corn Exchange in Low Kessel has run counterclockwise since a repair in 1987, when the mechanism was reassembled by a firm that has since ceased trading. A motion to correct it has been put to a public meeting three times since 2022. Last month it was defeated again, by 214 votes to 96.
Speakers against the motion said that everyone in the town had learned to read it, that visitors found it memorable, and that mending it now would mean admitting it had been wrong for thirty-nine years. A councilor who supported the repair said she accepted the result. "It tells the right time," she said. "It just arrives at it from the other direction."
Greyfell Basin / The Basin Courier
Doomsday fellowship reschedules for fourth time, citing venue
The Fellowship of the Imminent Morning, which had announced the end of the present age for a Saturday in March, has moved the date to the autumn after discovering that the parish hall was double-booked with the district dog show.
The fellowship's secretary said members had considered holding the event elsewhere but felt it ought to be somewhere with parking. This is the fourth postponement since 2019. Previous dates were set aside for a burst pipe, a bereavement, and what the minutes describe as low turnout. The dog show went ahead. Best in show was a whippet.
Port Evening / The Evening Gazette
Museum finds it has exhibited its own fire extinguisher for nine years
Staff at the Port Evening Municipal Gallery have established that an object displayed since 2017 as Untitled (Red) is a fire extinguisher belonging to the building. It had been mounted on a plinth during a rehang, apparently in error, and a label was produced the following week by a member of staff who assumed someone else knew what it was.
In nine years the piece was dusted weekly, lit from above, twice lent to other institutions and once described in a visiting critic's column as "a quiet rebuke." The gallery says it will remain on display. "It has a following," a spokesman said. A second extinguisher has been bought for fires.
Saint Orrin / The Orrin Bell
Parish receives four hundred identical letters asking for abolition of Thursdays
The clerk to Saint Orrin parish council has reported receiving four hundred and six letters over two weeks, each typed, each unsigned, and each requesting in the same eleven words that Thursdays be discontinued within the parish boundary.
The council has no power over the calendar and has said so in a notice. The letters have continued. A handwriting expert was not consulted, the letters being typed. The clerk said the matter had been placed on the agenda for the next meeting, which is on a Thursday.
Garrow Mills / The Mills Observer
Shopping center closed since 2014 still plays music; nobody can find the switch
Residents near the former Garrow Gate shopping center have complained for the eleventh consecutive year about music coming from inside the building, which has been locked and without tenants since 2014. The sound is described as light orchestral and is audible from the parking lot between nine and half past five, and until four on Sundays.
The owners, a holding company, say the electricity account was closed a decade ago. The supplier agrees. An engineer who entered the building in the spring reported that the speakers were working, that he could not trace where they were wired to, and that he would prefer not to go back.
Vasterholm / The Vasterholm Post
Man returns library book sixty-one years late, with corrections
A copy of an introductory textbook on bridge design, borrowed from Vasterholm public library in 1965, was returned last week by a man of eighty-four who apologized for the delay and explained that he had not finished with it.
Librarians found the margins filled with notes in pencil, correcting what the borrower called "some serious mistakes in chapter six." The fine, calculated at the 1965 rate, came to a little over two hundred pounds, which was waived. The book has been returned to the shelves as amended. The borrower has taken out the second volume.
Dunfallow / The Dunfallow Record
Village's only traffic light listed as monument while stuck on red
The traffic light at the crossroads in Dunfallow, which has shown red in all four directions since a storm in 2021, has been granted protected status as a structure of local historic interest. The listing means it cannot now be altered without consent.
Motorists treat the junction as a crossroads and proceed with caution, as they have for five years. The parish chairman said the light was "part of who we are." An application to repair it, lodged before the listing, has been refused on heritage grounds.
Hallow Vale / The Vale Mercury
Taxidermy competition disqualifies winning entry for being alive
The top prize at the Hallow Vale Natural History Society's annual taxidermy competition was withdrawn after the winning entry, a tawny owl described by the judges as "uncannily lifelike," left the hall during the presentation of awards.
The entrant, who has competed for many years without success, admitted the owl was a rescued bird that would sit still for long periods. He said he had not expected to win and had not known how to raise the matter once he had. The owl was found on the roof and has not been charged. Second place was promoted.
Low Kessel / The Kessel Advertiser
Cemetery introduces loyalty card
The burial board at Low Kessel has begun issuing a stamped card to regular visitors, entitling the holder to a free cup of tea in the lodge after every tenth visit. The scheme was intended to encourage upkeep of graves.
A board member conceded that the name on the card, Frequent Mourner, had been "arrived at quickly." Take-up has been strong. Several holders are understood to be visiting graves of people they did not know, and one has asked whether points can be transferred to a relative in the event of her own death. The board is taking advice.
Greyfell Basin / The Basin Courier
Weather station reports same day twice
The automated weather station on Greyfell Top transmitted identical readings for two consecutive days in February: the same temperature to a tenth of a degree, the same wind, the same four millimetres of rain between two and three in the afternoon.
The operating body said a fault was the likeliest explanation and that an engineer would attend. Three residents have written to the Courier to say they also experienced the second day as the first, and that on the repeat they brought the washing in beforehand.
Port Evening / The Evening Gazette
Statue of unknown man unveiled; identity to be decided later
A bronze figure of a man in a coat was unveiled on the seafront at Port Evening after the committee responsible was unable, in six years, to agree whom it should commemorate. The plinth has been left blank.
The sculptor was commissioned in 2020 and paid in stages. By the time the casting was complete, each of the four candidates had been objected to. The chairman said the statue would be "available" should a suitable person emerge. Flowers have already been left. Nobody knows who by, or for whom.
Saint Orrin / The Orrin Bell
Man wins argument with satellite navigation, is awarded costs
A magistrate at Saint Orrin has found in favor of a delivery driver who was directed by his navigation device into the same field on eleven separate occasions and on the twelfth refused to turn.
The driver told the court the device had become "insistent." The farmer, who brought the action after the eleventh visit, withdrew it on hearing the evidence and is understood to have shaken the defendant's hand. The field has been marked on newer maps as a road. It remains a field. The device has been retired.