Burton Calling!

As most of you may know, my better half doubles up as the Poppies Trust Chairman (never say Chairperson...!)  The role isn't all glamour and glitz.  Or at all glamour and glitz come to think of it.  Unless there is something glamorous in a none-to-obvious-way about chairing committees, attending interminable Council meetings, selling 300 Club tickets, handing out flyers, and basically trying to be all things to all members.

Even the occasional media commitment usually lack any sort of wow-factor.

A case in point came last week when she was approached by Radio Northampton to help out with their Saturday morning "Treasure Quest" programme, where station employees criss-cross the county, directed by listeners answering questions as to locations.  Karen was asked to be at Latimer Park for about 10.15AM to meet the Radio car, assuming the good people of the County could decipher various cryptic clues as to locations.  The trip to Latimer Park was to be the third of the forth locations.

The carpark at LP is a pretty grim place at 3.00PM, let alone when completely empty at 10 o'clock in the morning!

Consequently Karen had decided not to be there too early, so she listened to the show, knowing she could be on site with no more than 10 minutes notice.  This suddenly became relevant, when the clue for the second location was given as, "John, after Olivia".  Given the clues about locations are usually impenetrably bizarre, the simplicity of this question, and the answer of "Newton" had the radio car speeding to that tiny village just outside of Geddington.  What if the next clue was equally easy?  Bloody hell, they could be heading to Burton in mere minutes!

However, before sprinting to the car, she listened to the next clue, and relaxed a little.  Even though we knew the next location was Burton Latimer, we were buggered if we could work it out from this clue, "Botterill's ex and one of Edison's Pioneers added to a preposition".  Eh?  What?  We fully expected this most-cryptic of clues to flummox the good folk of Northants for a while.  Far easier questions than this often lead to 20-30 minutes of random phone calls, suggestions and head-scratching.

Not today though.  Thirty seconds after the question was asked some annoying mare was on the blower to the radio station with the correct answer!  Unbelievable!  How the hell did she work out "Burton Latmer" from that?  I knew the answer and still had no idea?  A further 30 seconds later and Karen was gunning her engine and heading off.

The Radio car was soon in Burton, where the second part of their clue was, "A day for supporters to come out - find them here."  Not a particularly difficult one to work out, especially as the "Show Your Support Day" featured prominently on the news bulletin which was broadcast about 2 seconds earlier!

Thankfully Karen was there in time and met up with the Radio people for a quick chat about the match that day.  All's well that ends well.  Just another day as a Poppies Trust official!

"Broadsword calling Danny Boy,
Broadsword calling Danny Boy....."