Tag Archives: stepford wives

Body of Evidence

As you all hopefully remember a couple of weekends ago the clocks all went backwards an hour. This meant that for one day only everyone had an hour extra in the day. I very smugly used this extra hour to go for a run, although this meant in reality I was in bed by 9pm that night. Of course the clocks changing cause it to be pitch dark by 5 at night. Which means our street is even quieter than normal as when it’s dark older people do not venture out. At least that is what I always thought.

They do say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch, and on the surface it doesn’t get any quieter than our street but I’m now convinced this just hides a dark secret. As I’ve touched on briefly before there is a real element of Stepford Wives living down our street. The lawns are all mown to stripy perfection and the windows are always shiny. However I’m beginning to think it’s even more sinister than that. I suspect there is an entire criminal underworld operating down my street, the Stepford Wives of Apple Drive is just the cover up. Apple Drive is actually the ‘go to’ place for body disposal.

Once you look for it, the evidence is there for all to see. Despite the fact we live on a cul-de-sac with very little traffic all day,  suddenly at 4am you’d think we lived next to the M25 there are so many cars going up and down in the middle of the night. Then there is the chap up the road, who always carries a carrier bag with him. He walks up and down past our house at least five or six times a day. Firstly nobody needs to go shopping that often, and secondly his bags are always full on the way out, and empty on the way back. He is the main ring leader, The Chopper. The bodies get dropped off early morning, he chops them up and then buries body parts across the city. It’s the obvious explanation.

He’s not in it on his own, it’s a full street effort. The old couple over the road with the daily deliveries are receiving the cash payments. Why else would they get so many parcels delivered? Howard 2 is the driver for when they need to move heavy torsos. He comes across as deaf as a post, as he shuffles round with his walking stick. Yet once a week he goes out in his car in the middle of the night. The only way we know he’s been out is because invariably in the morning the car will be parked at some random angle across the drive way, or one night he’d backed it straight into his garage door.

Betty up the road disposes of smaller parts that it’s not worth burying. These she just puts into the wheelie bins around the street. You’ve never seen someone so keen to put other people’s bins in and out. As soon as the bin collectors have gone she’s off like a rocket putting everyone’s dustbins back, so she can check all the body parts have gone from inside. Mr Emmerdale Farm Extra cleans up after The Chopper, that’s the reason for the wellington boots and wax jacket. Even the grandkids of the old couple over the road get involved, the young boy looks like he’s innocently kicking a football around or riding his bike, but in reality he’s acting as look out and messenger. How else does The Chopper know how many bodies to expect?

Once you look at it like that it all fits. It also explains why the street is so quiet during the day, everyone is worn out from all the night work. I know the publicised reason behind the clocks changing is something to do with farmers, but I’m not sure that’s the real reason. I think it’s to help out body disposal groups. More darkness in an evening gives more chance for them to get bodies delivered. I’m definitely going to stick to early morning runs in future, less chance of me getting caught up with The Chopper.

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The Forgotten Garden

Due to it being my birthday, I took Monday off work. It was a lovely sunny day and I had a very enjoyable time pottering around in the garden, mowing the lawn along with the stepford wives up the road, and planting hanging baskets. This was the first time I’ve really done any gardening this year. I think this as well as the fact the daffodils are well and truly out on the York walls says that spring has most definitely sprung.
It’s amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine on an evening has. Everyone seems that much happier and despite there being exactly the same number of hours in the day, for some reason days always seem longer in the sunshine. It is nice to be able to walk home from work in the daylight again. However the sunshine does bring with it other problems, the biggest one for me being guilt.
Whenever the sun is out, I always feel the need to go outside and do something. Not a major three day hike over the dales, but mow the lawn, or visit a National Trust property, or walk someone’s dog. I blame my parents as I think it must be a hangover from when I was a child. Every day during the school holidays I was kicked out of the house in the morning and told to come back in time for tea. We were constantly informed that anything other than being outside was wasting the day. Although admittedly this came from the Mother who also told us that a television would blow up if it was left on for longer than half an hour at a time so we should have been suspicious (note this was only during the day, in the evening it could stay on as long as my parents wanted)
The problem is now as a grown adult, I don’t always want to have to go outside. Sometimes I just want to curl up in front of the television with a glass of wine and do nothing. Sometimes I just want to sit on the sofa and read a book. I’m a grown adult, so of course I should be able to do this. There is no one to tell me I can’t, no one to kick me out of the house until tea time, it is my house and I can sit around all day if I want to. Yet I just can’t do it. It is wasting the day don’t you know?
Sometimes I do long for the dark days of winter, when I can happily sit at home reading a crime novel pretending that if it weren’t for the rain and the sleet I’d actually be doing a 10k run before tea. There was a part of me hoping for rain on Monday so I could start my new SJ Watson book before I see him on Friday. Oh well, at least after a few months of being completely forgotten we now have a stripy front lawn and of course summer is always a good excuse for coffee and a few chapters of a book in the sun.

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Stepford Wives

As you may know I am currently off work recuperating from a  hysterectomy. Whilst unfortunately it does mean I’m never again allowed to clean, iron or unload the dishwasher (at least I’m sure that’s what the doctor told me) It does mean that at the moment I have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands. This has allowed for rather a lot of people watching out my front window and being on a relatively new street I’m still trying to figure out the dynamics.

Currently it seems to me that everyone is related to someone else on the street. There is Mr Emmerdale Extra from up the street who wanders around in welly boots, all he’s missing is the brace of pheasants over his arm. He is doing the garden for the couple over the road, who are an elderly couple I’ve rarely seen. I have however noticed a lot more activity over the road these past couple of weeks and even Mr Van Man has recently started visiting them which seems to be a new occurrence.

Despite not having been able to observe them up close from what I have seen the couple over the road are a bit strange. The number of parcels they get is what first alerted me to the suspicious behaviour. Originally we suspected them of being drug dealers, after all if I were a drug lord I think I’d recruit retired people to traffic for me, loads of time of their hands and no one would suspect them. A drugs empire would also explain the ridiculous amount of traffic that goes up and down the street at 3am as well as the large number of visitors they get during the day. However I am starting to think the whole thing is even more sinister and that actually our street is home to the new branch of Stepford Wives UK.

I have recently re-read the book the Stepford Wives by Ira Levin and it all fell into place. In case there are people who haven’t heard of this book before (or not watched the film which I think I may have done a while ago) it was written in 1972. The main character Joanna is a photographer who moves with her family to Stepford, a town where all the women seem to be the perfect housewife with their only role to keep house and keep their husbands happy. Joanna begins to think that there is something rather sinister going on and suspects the men of the town are swopping the women for robots in order to have complete obedience.

It all seems to fit with my observations and I have Mr Stepford over the road pegged as the ring leader who only brings out his wife as a marketing tool. You rarely see women on the street unless they are taking their grandchildren to school, or cleaning their windows. Mrs Van Man is never seen except when she opens the door to the daily tesco delivery. We assumed that both our neighbours Howard 1 and Howard 2 actually live on their own, yet Mr Stepford has recently visited both men, so maybe they do have wives inside and this week was their annual maintenance inspection.

Just as in the book everyone starts off being all friendly and innocent but the truth always comes out. If I suddenly spot Mr F getting pally with Mr Stepford I may start to worry. At least now my suspicions are aired if you suddenly find me cleaning windows you know it’s too late, especially as I’m not allowed to that ever again either!

 

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