You know the sort of slightly perplexed, out-of-body experience when something you see just doesn’t compute, don’t you?
When you really do a double take and, quite literally, rub your eyes and blink hard?
Well, it’s just happened to me, so let me explain.
I merely went outside. It was early morning, a drizzling, damp-everywhere sort of morning. Not desperately early, but not the crack of dawn either. I watched Eric, the dog, do his usual sniff and check ritual around the garden and both cats go their separate ways as they carried out their morning routines, as they patrolled the perimeter and then ventured further afield. I slurped the first mug of tea and, securely snug in my dressing gown and slippers, dry under the porch, I turned to go back inside, when I saw it.
My passport. On a ledge inside the porch.
Purply-red, shiny and firm. Evidently my passport, but not in my inside overcoat pocket where it had been stowed away following the e-passport check at Porto airport yesterday lunchtime.
I picked it up; it felt damp. I examined it and found that the pages were crinkly.
To say that I was perplexed was self-evident; like saying that Donald Trump is narcissistic.
The obvious question was how had it somehow been transported, Star-Trek style, from the inside pocket of my overcoat to the back porch of our farmhouse? I even went inside to check that it wasn’t some sort of freakish duplicate, but no, my pocket was empty.
I think better with a big mug of tea in hand, so brewed up again and mentally retraced my steps since arriving home. I had unloaded the bags, a big one and two carry-ons from the car. Then I had unloaded the coats. It was possible that my passport had fallen from my coat-pocket at this point, but how had it made its way, unbidden, to the back porch?
I dressed, still mulling over the conundrum and took “she who must be obeyed” to her yoga class.
I returned to find a missed call on my mobile telephone from our builder, a local chap. I returned the call to hear him explain all. He had called around, found us out, found my passport on the ground and had placed it in the porch.
So, the Erle Stanley Gardner mystery was solved; the passport must have fallen out of my pocket and fallen to the ground, unnoticed by me in my zeal to ferry bags and coats into the house.
As the chance visitor had passed by, it was seen and placed in a secure dry place. He had managed to come through the big wooden door without attracting Eric’s attention and had made his way around the house to the dry rear porch. Eric’s guard dog ability was clearly being challenged!
I spent the day gently drying out the passport and it is now restored to its former glory. I just hope that it isn’t an offence to get a passport damp. You won’t tell anyone, will you?