The UninTENTional Visitor

It has been a very busy year to date and there has been little time for writing. Best intentions for regular Blogging completely thwarted.

A few amusing anecdotes have arisen in the last few months and are worth recounting here.

I had a call from my mother some weeks ago, who upon returning to her house and having parked her car in the carport became aware of hiking tent which, in her absence, had been set up squarely in the middle of her back garden lawn. Prime position on the best piece of lawn.

She was not expecting visitors herself, nor had her sons mentioned any of their friends passing through.

She went into the back garden and proceeded to walk around the tent. It was a small light weight dome style hike tent with a camouflage pattern fabric. The flap was open and there was no sign of habitation. No rucksack, no sleeping bag, no sign of personal belongings or a person what so ever. She walked around the side of the house looking for any sign of a visitor or a note but found nothing. Eventually she decided that the owner must have gone for a walk to the local shops and would eventually return at some point.

As the sun started to set she occasionally looked out from her bedroom window which overlooked the garden to see if anyone had shown up yet. Still nothing. Much later that evening she even went back out to the garden for another look around but the garden was empty apart from the tent which simply sat there, flap swaying in the breeze, silently mocking her.

The following day and the day after still provided no further answers to the mystery of the tent and its owner.

Upon discussing it with my elder brother he simply said to her, “ Mum, these things are as light as a feather and it has probably been blown in by the wind from somewhere nearby.” Given that she had been having quite windy weather in recent times this seemed quite plausible. That the tent would have needed to clear the surrounding houses, TV antennas and tree tops and then for it to land upright and squarely positioned, bang in the middle of the rear garden, was quite incredible.

My mother hung a sign on the front gate for several weeks saying, “Tent Found – Enquire Within”, but there was no response.

I can imagine some poor hiker setting up his tent, turning around to get the pegs to fasten it down and then turning back to see it sailing away into the wild blue yonder. My brother is right though, it could have come from a long, long way away. Just no telling. Life is full of the unexpected which is what makes it so great.