Go on, own up. Which one of you came over here kicked the beer glass over?
A few days ago (in the post 'Alcohol problem') I wrote about a mysterious pint glass in the middle of the road that seemed to neither increase nor decrease in the level of the evil-looking liquid in it, whatever the weather.
It had sat there untouched for weeks – maybe months – but today it's been knocked off its perch on the central crash barrier and is lying on its side, forlorn and empty, rocking slightly on the spot as the wind gusts.
I know this because I've been trying to take a photo of it, which is no mean feat from the driver's seat of a car in the split second available on a busy road.
Yesterday on the way into work there was too much traffic and I couldn't linger. On the way home however, it was a different story. I was right next to it at a red light for long enough to fire off a couple of shots. The problem was, of course, that it was pitch dark, apart from the lager-orange glow of street lights and a yellow-and-white traffic bollard. The resulting photos, when I got them home, were problematic – if you knew you were looking for a beer glass, you could see where it was. If you didn't know what to look for they were just two dark photos with some indistinct white smears.
So I deleted them and resolved to try again today.
Except today, the glass wasn't there.
It's clearly too much of a coincidence that, after all this time, it should be trashed just as I start to take serious notice of it. And, all things being equal, I think it unlikely that one of you, dear readers, had made the trip over to west London with the cruel intent of spoiling my fun. You don't seem the sorts, some how. You lack the sadistic streak. And also the prohibitive air fare.
So it must be something more sinister. It can only be that the glass was some sort of plant, and my act of photographing it (with a flash, twice, at 3am) had led to it being abandoned. It could, I suppose, be the secret services – MI5, or MI6, or the CIA, or perhaps Mossad. It's unlikely to have been the News of the World, although it may have been some kind of cable TV reality show camera, and the Vatican probably wasn't responsible.
But personally, I think I know the answer.
It was the aliens. Oh yes it was. *nods*
They were planning an invasion, and I prevented it by overloading their cunningly-disguised sensor with two bursts of intolerably bright light. And so they've fled in their flying saucers, their evil schemes foiled.
I should get a medal, really, but I don't suppose I will.
*sigh*
Life is so unfair sometimes.