CONTENTS (so far)

1. Lockdown Challenge #1 The Jenga Tree
2. Lockdown Challenge #2 Trebian Spider Solitaire
3. Ian’s Adventures in Lockdown
4. FREE Derek Day Prequel. What Derek did in his final year at university.

LOCKDOWN CHALLENGE #1

Build a 3-D Jenga tree better than this one! You must use the complete set, balanced on just one vertical brick. No glue or sellotape allowed!

LOCKDOWN CHALLENGE #2

Trebian Spider: Select Spider Solitaire/simple one-suit version/open up all the cards immediately – then play. You may go back and/or restart as many times as you like.

A success rate of about one in ten is normal for beginners – reducing to an average of one in five for enthusiasts. Trebians score one in three.

It is rare to get a start with no possible play. Do not count these games in your overall success rate.

Beware – this game is addictive!

IAN’S ADVENTURES IN LOCKDOWN (These images represent Ian’s attempts to amuse his Facebook friends during the prolonged national misery. Judging by the responses, a few of them actually worked!)

SHORT STORY
DEREK DAY’S DIESEL DILEMMA (A Prequel)

In the final few years of his life, Arthur Ross VC made some pretty disastrous financial decisions. At the reading of the hero’s will, it was discovered that the amount of his debts and the value of his one remaining farm were roughly equal. A sale was organised. It gave his relatives some small solace that the farm was eventually purchased by the family friend who owned the adjacent property.

It was the Easter before Derek Day and his fiancée, Jessica Raybould, were due to take their University Finals. Derek wanted to stay in Nottingham and revise but Jess insisted on taking a three-day brain break by accepting an invitation from Derek’s parents in Chesterfield.

Victoria Day had come to admire Jess but couldn’t really understand what such a vivacious and attractive girl could possibly see in her rather studious and occasionally dull only son.

On the second day, Jess became restless and demanded that Derek take her on a tour of his old haunts. “Give me a glimpse into your past life; I want to know where you used to play, went to school and hang out as a teenager. Oh, come on, Derek – your mum’s offered to lend us the car!”

Derek had never driven regularly enough to be a confident driver and Jess hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since she’d passed her test shortly after her seventeenth birthday – but she was up for it. “I’ll drive – you can navigate!” she declared.

Thirty minutes on the phone to the insurance company convinced Derek that Jess was covered to drive and, after lunch on a cool bright day, he put aside his law books and they set off on a journey of nostalgia. An hour later it was done and Derek was itching to get back.

“You haven’t shown me your grandfather’s farm, yet!” Jess was beginning to get the hang of driving and wanted to extend the expedition.

“Fair enough,” replied Derek. “It’s more or less on the way back. We can do a drive-by.” He began to issue instructions. “There it is,” he said as Jess parked the Corsa on the opposite side of the road. “The new owners haven’t even changed the name!”

The tired sign hanging over an otherwise imposing entrance stated ‘Gold Beach Farm’.

“He wasn’t a modest man, your grandfather, was he?” laughed Jess.

Derek took the comment the wrong way. “He was a lovely man – my best friend for years and years!”

Realising she’d upset the man she adored, Jess took action. “Let’s have a closer look,” she said and she swung the car across the road onto the farm drive.

“What are you doing?” stammered Derek.

“Paying them a visit. They’re family friends, aren’t they? Maybe they’ll give me a guided tour!”

“But I haven’t seen them in years! What if they don’t recognise me!”

“Stop panicking, D! What can possibly go wrong?” she laughed.

Quite a lot, actually.

At the top of the drive there was an open inner gate giving access to a cobbled courtyard. Jess drove through and parked behind a white van that was in the process of being unloaded. She wound the window down at the approach of a big man and prepared to give him one of her famous ‘you’ll-do-anything-for-me-won’t-you’ smiles. She didn’t get chance.

“Who the fuck are you – and what do you want?” demanded the man in a tone that would have terrified a lesser mortal.

“And good day to you, too,” trilled Jess. “Thank you so much for the warm greeting. We’re friends of the owners – Mr and Mrs Tomlinson. Sorry we’ve come unannounced but I’m sure they’d love to see an old friend and his gorgeous fiancée?”

“They don’t live here anymore and we don’t welcome visitors so fuck off and take your shit humour with you!” He put his hand through the open window and waved a fist in front of Jess’ face. The air inside the car cooled alarmingly. Derek opened his door, climbed out and walked slowly around the front of the car. The angry man was half a head taller but something as trivial as size had never deterred Derek Day.

“Are you threatening my girlfriend?” he asked in a dangerously unthreatening voice.

“And you can fuck off too, Shorty!” He was now playing to an audience of three nervous-looking men who were distracted from unloading the van.

There was a shout from over by the buildings and a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman came striding over to the scene of the confrontation. “James,” she repeated. “Get on with unloading that van and leave those poor people alone!”

With a sneer, he sidled away and slapped one of his assistants across the head. Pure spite.

“So sorry about that, folks. I’m Marie Deane, the farm manager – you just can’t get good staff these days – what can I do for you?” Her words were genial; her eyes less so.

Jess breathed a sigh of relief. She’d witnessed the aftermath of Derek’s interaction with bullies at first hand once before. “No problem,” she said once Derek was safely back inside the Corsa. “My fiancé’s an old friend of the Tomlinsons and he actually used to live on the farm; I know it’s a bit rude to call unannounced but we were just passing…”

“Oh dear, bad news, I’m afraid. Mr Tomlinson was taken seriously ill this time last year. It’s not terminal but he was advised to move to Spain – better climate, you know. They still own the place but I run it for them now.” There was nothing further on offer and the manager waited for a response.

A calmer Derek leaned across to the open window. “Don’t worry, it was just a nostalgia visit – I wanted to show off where I used to live. Do you have contact details for the Tomlinsons – I’d like to at least send them a card?”

“I’m really sorry, we have a number for emergencies only. Their doctor has told us not to contact them; it’s a pretty serious mental health issue apparently. Mr T phones a couple of times a month for an update but, so long as their accommodation and treatment is paid for, and cash goes in the bank, they leave me to manage things.” She handed a business card to Jess. “Look, you can see we’re pretty busy now.” Ms Deane waved a finger towards the white van. “But nostalgia’s good; give me a call next time you’re over this way and I’ll organise a guided tour. It would be a pleasure.”

Jess smiled and nodded, wound up the window and reversed into a gap to point the car towards the exit. Derek looked around.

As they set off back down the drive, Jess couldn’t help but exclaim, “Wow! That was weird!”

“Extremely!” he responded.

“Well, did it look familiar – or different to your memory’s image?”

“Pretty much exactly the same, still smart – except for a glimpse of a very seedy static caravan down by the side of the barn.” And then Derek lapsed into considered silence for the three-mile return journey to his parents’ house.

Over the evening meal there was much discussion regarding the Tomlinson’s fate. No one had previously heard of the couple’s relocation to Spain but they knew that there were no children – so contact was likely to be problematic. Eventually, it was unanimously agreed that it was all very sad but that it was none of their business.

Except by Derek; it was dark by 8pm and he announced he was going for a run.

“What, at this time?” His mother was horrified.

“Leave him to it, Victoria,” said Jess. “He’s always doing daft things like this. He runs most nights when we’re in Nottingham. He’s a strange bloke – I blame the parents!” The two women laughed and reached for the Merlot.

Derek changed into his running gear and left the house at the same time as his father set off for work.

Twenty minutes later, Derek arrived at the farm. He leaned on the front fence and studied the buildings. Several lights were on but there was no visible activity outside. On their way out a few hours earlier, he’d noticed security cameras on the main drive so he took a detour across a fallow field.

A man was walking between the main buildings. It didn’t take an expert to work out that he was a sentry following a regular route, so Derek watched him to calculate his schedule. When confident there was an adequate slot, he manoeuvered between the residential buildings and entered the rear yard. There were actually three ancient static caravans, all in semi-darkness but he ignored them, instead approaching the building he remembered he used to call ‘The Giant Barn’. The most curious difference was the painstakingly blocked out windows. The main doors at the front were trimmed with thick black plastic sheeting. As the sentry passed, Derek squeezed against the corrugated metal. Strange, on such a chilly evening, the wall felt slightly warm. Now really curious and in near pitch dark, he felt his way along the side of the building to see if the little door in the rear was still accessible.

Again, the door was carefully trimmed around the edges and a substantial padlock was fitted. But the beauty of criminal activity in a farmyard, is the plethora of tools lying around. A garden fork proved up to the task of levering off the hasp and staple. Derek waited for the sentry to pass and left sufficient time for him to get to the other end of his patrol before opening the door a tiny fraction. Light flooded out. He closed the door quickly and was relieved to hear no shouts of alarm from inside. Checking his timing, he opened up once more and slipped inside.

He’d almost forgotten how large this barn, built during the heyday of his grandfather’s prosperity, actually was. From his position, alone in the brightness, it looked big enough to accommodate a Boeing.

Plants. Everywhere. Thousands of them! Derek was no expert in the field of drug cultivation – but he knew marijuana when he saw and smelled it! He had to get out of here and call his friend and mentor, Sergeant ‘Pug’ Davies. Derek had never even considered having his own mobile phone; Jess had one and they were rarely apart, so what was the point? He checked his watch and estimated the sentry would be far away, before opening the door just enough to squeeze through.

He was wrong. As he rounded the rear corner of the barn, the sentry was standing next to the open door of the nearest caravan.

The sentry hissed to the invisible occupants, “Get ready – ten minutes!” He slammed the door and slid over a substantial bolt.

A bolt on the outside of a caravan door? Not much in the way of Health & Safety here, then? Now Derek became really nosy. He tiptoed over and listened hard at the door. Foreign voices. He withdrew the bolt before looking inside. In the half-light he could see six young women cowering against the far wall. They were startled by the appearance of a stranger and started to move around and talk.

Derek put his finger to his lips and went, “Shhh.” A universal gesture he hoped would settle them down.

“Who are you?” came a heavily accented female tremor.

“Friend,” he said lamely.

“Have you come to make rescue?” Same voice.

“If you need rescuing, I’ll leave this door open. Your choice, but the other man will be back soon.”

“Please, please open other doors!”

More ‘prisoners’? “Who are you?” asked Derek.

“We come to England to work but we are made slaves and whores now!” said the spokeswoman. “Please open other doors!”

Derek needed to get away but a few more seconds couldn’t hurt – could it? A young woman jumped down beside him and gestured towards the other statics. Together they made their way to the doors and released the bolts. She hissed quiet words that Derek didn’t understand to the male occupants and they filed out. Puzzled at first, they soon shot off in every conceivable direction.

Within seconds there was mayhem. The sentry returned and began shouting the alarm. He took a swing with his stick at a running escapee and knocked the man to the ground. A moment later the sentry collapsed as Derek kicked him in the back of his left knee then gripped the man’s hair to smash his face into the cobbles. Other men were emerging from the house and Derek realised he needed to make himself scarce until things calmed down. As yet, the thugs should have no idea an interloper was on the premises so he had a half-decent chance of escaping detection.

Fortunately, Derek remembered the geography of the site very well. Further around the back of the giant barn was a good place to hide and he wriggled behind a large storage tank.

The shouting he could hear from his hiding place suggested that a couple of the escapees had been recaptured and locked back in one of the caravans but it appeared that the vast majority had scattered to the four corners of the farm. Derek hoped that some would make it onto the main road and be picked up by a conveniently passing police car – but things like that never happened in real life! The good news was that most of the guards had disappeared, too.

If he couldn’t get out to raise the alarm, he’d have to raise the alarm from inside. A fire would be useful. How large would a blaze have to be to attract the attention of people driving by – pretty impressive, he thought. However, there were problems. He didn’t smoke, so carried no lighter. He was behind a plastic tank he suspected contained several hundred litres of red diesel but he knew that particular fuel was relatively difficult to set alight. Even that was irrelevant because the fuel tank was locked.

The garden fork! He retrieved the implement and considered the risk of taking a mighty swing at the plastic side. The noise was appalling, but much to Derek’s amazement, the prongs penetrated and a slim trickle of red liquid emerged.

No one seemed to have heard the noise but that wasn’t the whole issue; he still had no means of lighting the fuel.

Keeping low and using the now familiar surroundings to best effect, he made his way back towards the caravans. The man he had flattened a few minutes earlier was, in very dazed condition, seated on the cobbles obviously waiting for his buddies to come to his assistance. He raised a temporary, painful smile as the track-suited figure approached him; sadly there was no help there. Derek hit him hard on his already damaged nose. Back to sleep. Fact: villains always smoke – therefore always carry lighters. A quick search of pockets solved another of Derek’s problems but, as he returned to the leaking tank, he still had to consider getting the diesel hot enough to ignite. He certainly couldn’t mess about out in the open so a bit more foraging produced an old metal bucket and a discarded newspaper. A couple of litres would probably be enough.

A short distance away was a decrepit lean-to shed – the perfect host for a bonfire. Derek tugged open the unlocked door and stepped inside the darkness. He was immediately jumped by three people – a group of the escaped ‘slaves’ were in hiding. Derek had to inflict moderately severe damage on one of them before the others realised they were attacking their benefactor.

In the melee the diesel was spilt on the wooden floor along with the newspaper. Derek held up the stolen lighter – that, combined with the stench of fuel, convinced the others they should leave – pretty damn quick! He lit the dry end of the newspaper and watched the flame spread to the soaked area. When it hit the diesel – it went out!

Just as Derek was trying to think of a better way to cause a blaze, a tiny miracle occurred. The floor of the shed was tinder dry and partially rotten. Some embers under the burning newspaper were beginning to glow and judicious blowing caused then to produce flame. Within a minute, the burning wooden floor was producing enough heat to convince the diesel that it was time to do its thing. Slowly at first, the shed walls, the roof and most of its contents turned to brilliant flame – job done – time to leave.

It was not to be. Outside, the three men who’d been hiding in the shed were on the ground being enthusiastically kicked by three guards. It was one of those moments when a ‘normal’ fight enthusiast would have ‘seen red’ and dived into the attack. Not Derek, his grandfather’s friends had trained him to focus his anger and weigh up any dangerous situation. When outnumbered, strategy is everything.

“It’s probably me you should be annoyed with, chaps!” he said in a terribly matter-of-fact voice. The three thugs turned slowly. One of them was the man who’d threatened Jess in the car. Bonus. Derek hoped he’d be the first to come forward.

He was. “You!” he yelled – and charged, arms held out in preparation for a bear-hug embrace. The big man had exposed himself to so many possibilities of counter-attack that Derek was almost spoiled for choice – before advancing to spin on one leg and jab the sole of his right foot viciously into his target’s stomach, taking him out of the game for at least five minutes. As expected, the next one hesitated before he came on. If the two had advanced together, it would have been more dangerous but they mistimed it – arriving a full second apart. The speed of Derek’s sidestep caused the closer of the two to lose his impetus, providing a perfect opportunity for a jump up to facilitate a wickedly powerful elbow strike to the temple. The third man stopped his advance half a second too late. Another leap and Derek’s right fist was descending at alarming speed when it met the bridge of the man’s nose – causing an enormous surge of blood.

‘Drat!’ thought Derek looking down at his tracksuit. ‘Now, that’s going to take some explaining.’

But that was the least of his problems; the Farm Manager appeared – and she was holding a double-barrelled shotgun! “You’re a handy chap, aren’t you? You should work for me.” It was said in a tone so low-key it rocked Derek to his core. She lifted the gun and pointed it straight at his face.

No move was going to be fast enough in this situation and, for a split second, Derek tried to think of a witty comment for his final words. Suddenly, the woman screamed and toppled over. One of the slaves who’d been beaten down on the ground had recovered his senses sufficiently to spin around and kick out one of her ankles. Derek ignored her (it was against his principles to hit women) but snatched up the gun and threw it into the conflagration behind him. When he turned back, the woman had gone and he heard a car start up in the courtyard.

What a fire he had created! The flames had reached the far corner of the Giant Barn’s roof and it seemed intent on joining in the excitement.

The sound of distant sirens told Derek it was time to leave and without further ado, he set off back through the fields, climbed the fence and did a circuitous jog back to his parents’ house.

His father was working nights and Derek hoped not to have to give details of his exploits to fiancée and mother – but it was not to be – they were still up. After thirty minutes of determined interrogation and serious earache, his clothes were forcibly removed and placed in the washing machine. Derek was ordered to take a bath. He was joined by Jess (he was so relieved it wasn’t his mother), who scrubbed him from head to foot to remove all traces of diesel and smoke. The intimate touching led to other things – on a towel on the bathroom floor.

He looked down into her bright blue eyes and whispered, “Am I forgiven?”

She looked up into his doleful brown eyes and replied, “No, you’re bloody not!”

As usual when staying in the family home, they retired to separate bedrooms. Although Derek’s father knew his son lived in the same student accommodation as his fiancée, he was of the old school, and assumed that they were ‘saving themselves’ for their wedding. In this theory, he was entirely wrong.

At six o’clock the next morning, Derek’s mother drove her son and Jess back to their bedsit in Nottingham. By eight fifteen she was back in her house. Five minutes later, her husband returned from work. He kissed her on the cheek, drank a cup of tea, had a shower and was fast asleep in bed by nine.

Also at nine o’clock there was the knock on the door that Mrs Day had been dreading. At least it was a friendly face. Detective Sergeant ‘Pug’ Davies had been a regular visitor since he’d brought home a twelve-year-old Derek, after intervening in a fight to prevent injury to two older bullies who were being soundly thrashed. “Morning, Victoria,” he said rather seriously, “may I have a word with Derek, please?”

“Derek? He’s at uni. in Notts. I thought you knew that, sergeant.” Exceptional innocence was portrayed.

“Strange! I’ve just been involved in interviewing a load of Syrian illegals about a fire and a massive punch-up at Gold Beach Farm last night. They told our interpreter they’d been rescued by a young man whose description sounded very much like your Derek? Funny coincidence that – what with your links to the farm.”

‘Shit!’ thought Victoria. “Coincidence?” said Victoria.

“Gang of drug dealers and people smugglers, apparently. Our lads found drugs of one sort or another in just about every outbuilding; street value of about two million quid went up in flames!  All but two of the gang got away. Would you believe they’d had the farm owners locked up in their own house for the best part of a year? Poor devils are in hospital now but don’t seem physically damaged.”

“That’s good news – I’ll go and visit them.”

“It is. I expect we’ll get more evidence about the intruder when we catch up with the rest of the gang.”

‘I hope you don’t,’ thought Victoria. “I’m sure you will,” said Victoria.

“Crafty buggers had wrecked their own CCTV!”

‘How fortunate,’ thought Victoria. “How fortunate,” said Victoria. “Sorry! I meant unfortunate!” Phew, that was close.

There was only a moment’s hesitation. “I’m sorry to have missed Derek. Still, never mind, give him my best when you see him.”

“I will, sergeant, but you can call him on his fiancée’s mobile – I’ll get you the number,” she replied.

“Not necessary,” he said. “I’ll see plenty of him when he joins up. Tell him to concentrate on getting a good degree – it’ll help him to fast-track.”

As he walked out of the door, Pug’s expression was an intriguing mixture of emotions. He’d noticed his young friend’s mother’s hands were trembling – but he was far too polite to draw attention to it. Only close colleagues would have noticed his left eyebrow was slightly raised – a sure sign that he’d had a suspicion confirmed.

DS Davies didn’t want to stay any longer. He really had to get back to the scene of the crimes – he needed to see if he could turn up any more evidence – before anyone else did!