A Heartwarming True Story
Mysterious Happenings In An English Village
In the North-East of England there’s a pit village where odd things have been happening for the past few years.
This village was once a thriving mining community, but its economy collapsed when its pit closed back in 1981. Since then times have been hard for many of its 4,700 inhabitants who, with true Northern grit, have weathered the changes in their fortunes stoically.
Now, though, according to a feature in the Daily Mail, there have recently been some very positive developments.
These developments are mysterious as well as positive.
They concern bundles of money that have been found lying around, intermittently, in the village during the past five years.
These bundles have usually consisted of 100 notes totaling £2,000. So they have not been exactly random! And that’s a lot of dosh in a community where many are on benefits, jobs are scarce and where a terrace house can be bought for little more than £5,000.
Actually, it’s a big sum for anyone — and here’s where the story takes a further interesting turn:
It’s now known that a minimum of £26,000 has been distributed in £2,000 wads since 2014 — each wad casually dropped on the ground within one mile of the village-centre.
How is this known? Because no less than 13 such money-bundles have been handed in by honest villagers to the local police station!
Of course others might have been found and not handed in, but the fact remains that — whatever else is going on — honesty in this village is alive and kicking.
The story gets better, because of what happened after the police handed the money back to its finders.
It needs mentioning here that until very recently the police, for fear of an influx of hoaxers or false claimants, swore all finders to secrecy.
So those who brought the money in were urged to keep quiet about it when, after a few days without a claimant, the police handed the 100 £20 notes back to be spent however the finder pleased.
Well, I promised the story would get better — so here’s how some of the money was spent:
One recipient donated most of the money to an Alzheimer’s charity, as her two sisters had been afflicted by the disease, and gave £500 to a friend whose daughter Georgina had died aged 20 from a brain tumour.
This person in turn handed over a cheque for her £500 to the Teenage Cancer Unit in the Newcastle hospital that had lovingly cared for her daughter. To keep its source secret, she explained her generosity by simply saying she’d had a windfall.
Another finder of £2000 was the sister of a teaching assistant at the local primary school, where they are now using her find as an assembly theme about honesty.
The pupils are being taught how honesty brings its own rewards and asked what they would do if they found the money. This must surely be leading to some animated discussions!
These are echoed in the village as a whole, where residents have endless theories about who their mystery benefactor might be and about why he or she chooses to distribute the money so seemingly randomly.
Is it random, though — or a plan that’s been carefully thought through?
Whatever lies at the root of the story, do you agree it’s one that warms the heart in this rather cynical age of ours?
