By one of those embarrassing muddles it is easy to blame on a new-fangled locking system but which can't be concealed by such

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By one of those embarrassing muddles it is easy to blame on a new-fangled locking system, but which can't be concealed by such a threadbare excuse, a key found itself locked in a boot The doors were secure. The car was impenetrable, and plans began to dissolve around me I had a date at the turkey farm, a mile or so away. I would be late for the rehearsals for the town play, in the little theatre. The phone was in the car (though, unknown to me, already rendered useless by the granite mass of the hills around). Tamworth then revealed itself.My friend of 20 minutes, Peggy Johnson, hoisted the storm cones. From one of the two stores – not the other one, which is called The Other Store – came a key for a similar looking car.

The key, of course, was sitting in an unlocked car – a standing rebuke to the suspicious visitor from London It didn't work But Dan the policeman was on his way. Meanwhile we went into the town hall, outside which the stricken car sat, and inside which we passed through a door bearing the legend "Town Clerk and Tax Collector". This is where the town government resides, under three – only three – "selectmen", chosen each year by the town meeting at which Tamworth turns itself for a day, like many places across the New England states, into a Yankee Greek city state, sorting everything out in a cheering moment of direct democracy. A new selectman joins the town government, to replace the one whose three-year term is over. It goes round and round, as it has since sometime in the middle of the 18th century.Fascinating, but not the answer to the armoured car, which had now turned into a safe-cracker's nightmare. Dan Poirier, the policeman, had come with a bendy piece of plastic with which he was attacking the windows.

A minor crowd was gathering at the street corners, eddying round the scene Scott, the forester, came along. He had various bars and gadgets in his truck, but nothing that wouldn't leave Dollar Rent A Car wanting a large refund.The pace was quickening The play rehearsal was about to start A teacher arrived He was Richard Posner, from Essex. He and his wife run a little alternative school in Peggy's house The children coming to the play rehearsal milled around him "Why here?" I asked him "Look around you Why not?" he said The kids wondered how to get into the car They poked and prodded along with Dan The shop door jangled as people came out to look. Cars slowed down even more than usual as they tootled along Main Street.

The librarian was wheeling a cartload of books, packed in old whiskey boxes, back from the store to her renovated building (The Cook Library, 1895) and she paused to sympathize. The bell on the Congregational Church, which makes all its white boards shake once every hour, began to boom. There wouldn't be time to get the turkeys before the curtain went up at the rehearsal.Then came Jerry, summoned from a garage not far away He opened what seemed to be a burglar's box of dreams. Coat-hangers, plastic rods, wire of all sorts, wooden plungers and sticks, bits of string and implements that looked as if they had been a job lot from the last dentist to leave Tamworth now lay before us. He began to fiddle and jiggle, and Dan the policemen went off on his rounds, tactfully avoiding the skilful denouement Word had spread.